马文·闵斯基

生平

生于犹太人家庭中，高中就读菲利普斯学院。高中毕业后，在1944年至1945年间，服役于美国海军，参与第二次世界大战。1950年于哈佛大学获得数学学士学位，1954年于普林斯顿大学获得数学博士学位。自1958年起在麻省理工学院任教，担任东芝媒体艺术与科学教授（Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences）、麻省理工学院电子工程与计算机科学教授，直到他过世为止。

他有数项发明，如1957年发表的共聚焦显微镜，1963年发表的头戴式显示器。他与西摩尔·派普特共同发展了第一个以Logo语言建构的机器人，命名为海龟（Turtle）。1951年，他设计并建构了第一部能自我学习的人工神经网络机器，SNARC。1952年，他发明会自行关闭电源的无用机器(Useless Machine)

1956年，他与约翰·麦卡锡组织了达特茅斯会议，在这场会议中，人工智能的概念被提出，在之后形成了一个新的学门。在麻省理工学院，他与约翰·麦卡锡共同创立了人工智能研究室（MIT计算机科学与人工智能实验室的前身）。

闵斯基奠定了人工神经网络的研究基础。

2016年1月24日，闵斯基因脑内出血病逝，享寿88岁。

荣誉

闵斯基曾获得多项荣誉。他是美国工程院和美国科学院院士，于1969年获得图灵奖，1990年获得日本国际奖，1991年获得IJCAI卓越研究奖，2001年获得富兰克林奖章。

Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American mathematician who conducted research in the cognitive and computer science aspects of artificial intelligence (AI). After three years as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, Minsky joined the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1958 and spent the rest of his career at that institution. There, he co-founded MIT's AI laboratory, among other initiatives, and wrote extensively about AI and philosophy. Minsky, Claude Shannon, Nathaniel Rochester, and John McCarthy have been called the "fathers of AI" due to their participation in the Dartmouth workshop. At the time he was made emeritus, Minsky was the Toshiba Professor of Media Art & Sciences at MIT.

Minsky received many accolades and honors for his work, including the ACM Turing Award in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement in 1982, the Japan Prize in 1990, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2001, and of the past-present-future trio of Dan David Prizes in 2014, the "Future"-oriented prize for "Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Mind". He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1973 and the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 1989, and was inducted into IEEE Intelligent Systems' AI Hall of Fame for contributions to AI and intelligent systems in 2011.

Early life and education

Marvin Lee Minsky was born on August 9, 1927, into a Jewish family in New York City. His mother was Fannie (Reiser), a Zionist activist, and his father was Henry, an eye surgeon. Minsky attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School and the Bronx High School of Science. He later attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. He served in the U.S.……

Career

Minsky began his academic career as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 1954 to 1957. He joined the MIT faculty in 1958 and remained there until his death. He joined the staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in 1958; a year later, he and John McCarthy initiated what was, as of 2003, named the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Contributions in computer science

Minsky's inventions include the first head-mounted graphical display (1963) and the confocal microscope (1957, a predecessor to today's widely used confocal laser scanning microscope). With Seymour Papert, he developed the first Logo programming language-driven "turtle robot". In 1951, Minsky built SNARC, which is often considered the first artificial neural network.……

Role in popular culture

Minsky examined the possibility that extraterrestrial life may think like humans, thus permitting communication.

Minsky was an adviser to Stanley Kubrick on his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey; one of the movie's characters, Victor Kaminski, was named in Minsky's honor. Arthur C. Clarke's novel of the same name explicitly mentions Minsky.……

Useless machines

While working at Bell Labs in 1952, Minsky proposed a design for a useless machine he called the "ultimate machine".……

Books

1967 – Computation: Finite and Infinite Machines, Prentice-Hall

1969 – Perceptrons: An Introduction to Computational Geometry, MIT Press

1986 – The Society of Mind

2006 – The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind

Awards and recognition

Minsky won the Turing Award, "computer science's highest prize", in 1969, the Golden Plate Award of the Academy of Achievement in 1982, the Japan Prize in 1990, the IJCAI Award for Research Excellence for 1991, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal from the Franklin Institute in 2001.……

Personal life

In 1952, Minsky married pediatrician Gloria Rudisch; together they had three children. Minsky was a talented improvisational pianist, and published musings on the relations between music and the mind.

Opinions

Minsky was an atheist. He was a signatory to the Scientists' Open Letter on Cryonics.

Association with Jeffrey Epstein

Minsky received a $100,000 research grant from Jeffrey Epstein in 2002, four years before Epstein's first arrest for sex offenses;……