I think Minsky was the last living giant of AI that attended the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which many cite as being the beginning of NLP, computer vision, machine learning, etc.
Sad news...
Marvin Minsky dies at 88
31–40 of 188 posts
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#32In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher…
It is now several decades later. Do TensorFlow/CNN builders use random initial configurations, or custom designed stuctures?
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Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#33Admin, can we get a black bar for this? Marvin Minsky is widely referred to as the "Founding Father of AI."
I can't imagine who deserves a black bar if Minsky doesn't, unless a grey bar would be more appropriate (Minsky was signed up for cryonics with Alcor, so he's not dead dead.)
When he's uploaded, who owns the copyright of this mind? Should it be considered a derivative work from his education?
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#34"You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way." ... RIP ... The Society of Mind one of the best books.
After reading that book my imagination came up with a cartoon I doodled in my notebook. It was someone speaking at Minsky's funeral and saying "I know he thought my mind was just a bunch of simple machines like Builder, but he was still a pretty good guy."
Not that I knew anything about him... it was just an impression.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#35I think Minsky was the last living giant of AI that attended the 1956 Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence, which many cite as being the beginning of NLP, computer vision, machine learning, etc. Sad news...
Trenchard More of Dartmouth was also a participant and is, as far as I know, still alive
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't imagine who deserves a black bar if Minsky doesn't, unless a grey bar would be more appropriate (Minsky was signed up for cryonics with Alcor, so he's not dead dead.)
When he's uploaded, who owns the copyright of this mind? Should it be considered a derivative work from his education?
Uh, Minsky does?
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#37Very sad and surreal, I happened to just be reading his Wikipedia page yesterday. I hope the cause of death does not prevent his cryopreservation. Say what you will about cryonics, but it definitely gives you a better chance of living again than internment or cremation. I hope the world will see his genius again.
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#38Besides his contributions to computer science, his invention of the confocal microscope profoundly affected biology research and is still in wide use.
Wow, I didn't know that he invented confocal!
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#39Favorite paper of his:
Why Programming is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly Understood and Sloppily-Formulated Ideas
http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/Why%20programming%20...
Re: Marvin Minsky dies at 88
#40We just lost a giant. Hard to imagine someone more black bar worthy for Hacker News, hope we have one up soon.
I hope not. The black bar has become a meaningless exercise in political posturing. Edit: allow me to clarify - just having to choose whether or not someone is "black bar worthy" is distasteful. Ian Murdock didn't get a black bar that I can recall, and I don't remember seeing one since then, even though other people relevant to the community have died. Are we to expect someone to change the color of the bar every tim…
Just want to speak up and say that your comment is actually very sensible, and it's terrifying to see it's downvoted.