WEBVTT - Marvin Minsky: Forward Thinker 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.160 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:14.760 Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:18.439 podcast that looks at the future and says Marvin, I 0:00:18.480 --> 0:00:22.600 love you. Remember, I'm programmed for you. I'm Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:22.680 --> 0:00:25.159 and I'm Joe McCormick. And our other host, Lauren is 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.120 not with us today, but you you had something to 0:00:28.120 --> 0:00:30.440 say about Marvin there. Now, does that mean today we're 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.400 gonna be talking about somebody named Marvin? We are? Is 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.120 it going to be Lee Marvin? It will not be 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.120 Lee Marvin apart from this very moment where we are 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:41.920 talking about Lee Marvin. No, Lee Barman wouldn't make a 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:43.720 lot of sense on this party. No. I mean, you know, 0:00:43.920 --> 0:00:48.360 the lyric refers to Marvin the paranoid android from Hitchhiker's 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.600 Guide to the Galaxy. But we're not talking about that 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.960 Marvin either. Although we're talking about a Marvin who had 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.920 a lot to do with artificial intelligence, which Marvin the 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:01.880 paranoid Android possessed a great love that was kind of 0:01:01.920 --> 0:01:03.600 a long way of going about that. We're talking about 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.520 Marvin Minsky. Marvin Minsky. So he passed away last month. Yes, 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.560 Marvin Minsky was an artificial intelligence pioneer associated with the 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:14.880 m I T. And he he passed away on Sunday, 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:19.200 January four, sixteen, and a bunch of publications that I 0:01:19.240 --> 0:01:22.360 read and I'd seen online had been running some retrospectives 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:26.240 of his life, looking at his influence on his main field, 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:28.480 which I guess you would say is artificial intelligence, but 0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:33.080 also on the history of computational theory and on cognitive science. 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.959 You might say, yeah, it's interesting because uh, you know, 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:40.520 we often will refer to artificial intelligence as being multidisciplinary. 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:43.440 It's not. You know, you could argue artificial intelligence is 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.480 its own discipline, but within that you have other disciplines. 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:50.920 It's far more complex than just a label. And really, 0:01:50.960 --> 0:01:54.320 if you're talking about the the entire scope of artificial intelligence, 0:01:55.040 --> 0:01:59.360 it almost necessarily encompasses all of human knowledge. Yeah, you're 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.600 You're not wrong, I mean, and Minsky in many ways 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.680 was kind of a human example of this, because he's 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:11.920 certainly had a wide variety of interests and um and 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:13.960 so we wanted to really kind of talk about him, 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.520 and in a way we're thinking about doing occasionally an 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:21.560 episode about a forward thinker of some sorts. So we 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.720 may in the future do episodes about other Forward thinkers. 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.079 This is sort of a pilot program for that, and uh, 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:29.720 I know, there are a lot of people we would 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:32.120 love to talk about in the future, So we're gonna 0:02:32.200 --> 0:02:35.000 kind of start with this one. And if you guys 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.119 out there have people, you know, Forward thinkers you would 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:42.000 love us to to profile, you should definitely let us know. 0:02:42.080 --> 0:02:43.560 And we'll talk more about that at the end. But 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.359 let's talk more about Minsky. Yeah, and so we we 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:48.400 thought it'd be good to talk about Minsky because we 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:51.280 so often talk about artificial intelligence on the program and 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.960 it's one of the great future frontiers that we keep 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.000 coming back to, and that his his influence on the 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.320 development of artificial intelligence in the SA and half of 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.320 the twentieth century has been so profound, and also his 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:07.400 views on where artificial intelligence had been going over the 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.800 last decade are really interesting. Yeah, we'll conclude with our 0:03:10.840 --> 0:03:13.639 discussion on that, but to start off at the beginning, 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:18.239 Minsky himself was born in New York City on August nine, 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.640 nineteen seven. Yeah. I so there was a piece that 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.120 we read that was a profile of Minsky from The 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.520 New Yorker in nineteen eighty one that was written by 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:31.120 the physicist Jeremy Bernstein. It was just shy of a 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:33.800 full autobiography. I mean it was Yeah, it was really 0:03:33.840 --> 0:03:36.200 comprehensive and and one of the things that makes me 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:39.440 realize is that we totally do not have space on 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.040 this podcast to cover all of the interesting aspects of 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.720 his life. So we're just going to do a kind 0:03:44.720 --> 0:03:46.680 of highlight reel of some of the things that stuck 0:03:46.720 --> 0:03:48.720 out to us. But if you're interested in the stuff 0:03:48.760 --> 0:03:51.200 we have here, I would highly recommend checking that out 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.440 to learn more about him. But anyway, that piece is 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.080 going to be the source of several quotes that I've 0:03:57.160 --> 0:04:00.960 pulled about Minsky's childhood and and edgy cation that I 0:04:01.000 --> 0:04:03.560 thought would help give you a better picture of sort 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:06.160 of the color of his personality in life. Right, Yeah, 0:04:06.200 --> 0:04:09.480 because this guy was a lot of people described him 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.720 as being imaginative and humorous and maybe some people would 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:16.680 say eccentric. Certainly they would say, you know, he was 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:22.440 very enthusiastic, so a vibrant personality, not like some person 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:26.080 who would cloister himself away from everybody else in order 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.359 to work on ideas. He strikes me as uh a 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:33.520 quintessential outside the box thinker, you know what I mean, 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:36.440 somebody who would always approach a problem in a in 0:04:36.480 --> 0:04:39.800 a strange and usually fruitful way. And he loved to 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:44.039 incorporate students in his in his thinking. You love to 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:47.520 collaborate with students because I think, although I don't think 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.279 he ever necessarily articulated it this way, to me, it 0:04:50.360 --> 0:04:53.200 sounds like he loved to talk with people who had 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.919 not yet learned what was impossible, because that meant that 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.400 they didn't put those constraints on their ideas from the getting. 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:03.080 And that's where you see a lot of innovation. Yeah, 0:05:03.080 --> 0:05:05.400 I know exactly what you mean, and I think it's 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:07.719 kind of inspiring in that right. I agree, But but 0:05:07.800 --> 0:05:11.000 I want to start with with a little a picture 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.599 of little Marvin. So he's talking about the different interests 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.400 he had in in subjects in school when when he 0:05:17.480 --> 0:05:20.480 was a kid, and he he talks about his interesting 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.159 chemistry and this is his sort of hands on approach 0:05:23.680 --> 0:05:27.240 to doing experiments and learning things firsthand. So he says, 0:05:27.800 --> 0:05:29.960 I've been reading some chemistry books and I thought it 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.279 would be nice to make some chemicals. In particular, I 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:36.520 had read about ethel merkup Tan, which interested me because 0:05:36.520 --> 0:05:38.839 it was said to be the worst smelling thing around. 0:05:39.520 --> 0:05:43.120 I went to and this is his teacher, Zim mr Zim. 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:45.480 I went to Zim and told him that I wanted 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.240 to make some. He said, sure, how do you plan 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:50.360 to do it? We talked about it for a while, 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:52.200 and he convinced me that if we were going to 0:05:52.240 --> 0:05:55.160 be thorough, we should first make ethanol, from which we 0:05:55.160 --> 0:05:58.320 were to make ethel chloride. I did make the ethanol 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:02.039 and then the ethyl chloride, which instantly disappeared. It's about 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:04.640 the most volatile thing there is. I think Zim had 0:06:04.680 --> 0:06:07.479 fooled me into doing this synthesis, knowing that the product 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:09.960 would evaporate before I had actually got to make that 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.640 awful merkuptan. I remember being sort of mad and deciding 0:06:13.640 --> 0:06:16.240 that chemistry was harder than it looked on paper, because 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:20.080 when you synthesize something, it can just disappear. I thought 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:23.400 this was an interesting metaphor also for the way you 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.760 would end up chasing the basis of physical intelligence. Sure, yeah, 0:06:27.760 --> 0:06:31.600 I mean it's it's you know, there's one thing that 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:33.600 he would refer to, uh, you know. He would say 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:36.120 that intelligence was sometimes why you would call a suitcase 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.960 word because he would cram so many different concepts into 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:45.240 the the suitcase of intelligence. And uh, we've also mentioned 0:06:45.240 --> 0:06:48.120 this when he would say the same thing about consciousness. 0:06:48.400 --> 0:06:50.400 But I know that we've on this episode or not 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:52.160 this episode, but on the show I've talked about how 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:54.800 consciousness is kind of one of those ideas where you 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:58.839 almost define it by striking things out from under the 0:06:58.920 --> 0:07:02.080 umbrella of consciousness, right, and then you're like, okay, so 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:06.120 whatever's left, that's what consciousness is. It's it's just some people, 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:09.640 some people have made the criticism of of consciousness theory 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:12.760 that you know, it's almost like when you're saying what 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:15.200 consciousness is, you're just making a list of all the 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.960 things the brain does and then striking out everything that 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:22.120 we fully understand or not fully understand, but everything that 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.720 we understand the physical basis, we've got a good grip 0:07:24.800 --> 0:07:28.360 on the actual mechanisms that are going on behind the scenes. 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.960 And so actually, I'm okay with using consciousness as a 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:34.800 placeholder until we figured everything else out. That will kind 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:36.880 of come into play with his ideas on what thought 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:39.360 was all about. But before we get to that, we 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:42.040 also need to talk that about how when he was 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:46.560 uh when in the four he was joined the U. S. Navy, 0:07:46.840 --> 0:07:49.680 served in the Navy until nineteen. Yeah. I think he 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:52.360 explains that he he joined the Navy because he was 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:54.880 saying that he knew they would send him to electric 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:58.920 electricians electrical school whatever they called it back then, They 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:01.840 would send him to school if he if he joined. 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.080 So I think he was going to he was on 0:08:04.120 --> 0:08:06.600 track to be a radar technician or something like that. 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:08.840 But of course that you know, he was in the military, 0:08:08.880 --> 0:08:11.800 so they had him do basic training, he says. And 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:13.800 he talks about this group that he was in the 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.640 in the Navy with, and he says, our little group 0:08:16.760 --> 0:08:19.280 was a strange kind of mini Harvard in the middle 0:08:19.320 --> 0:08:23.440 of the Navy. Everything seemed unrealistic. I practiced shooting down 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:27.120 planes on an anti aircraft simulator. I held the base record. 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:29.800 I shot down a hundred and twenty planes in a row. 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:32.520 I realized I had memorized the training tape and knew 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.400 in advanced exactly where each plane would appear. But I 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.520 must have some odd skill in marksmanship. Many years later, 0:08:38.600 --> 0:08:40.560 my wife and I were in Mexico on a trip. 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.480 We came across some kids shooting at things with a rifle. 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:45.440 I asked them if I could try it, and I 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:48.320 hit everything. It seems that I have a highly developed 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.080 skill at shooting things for which there is no explanation. 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:55.680 I also, I also love that he he talks about 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:57.560 how there were maybe four people in my company who 0:08:57.559 --> 0:09:00.680 are really remarkable, including a mathematician and an astronomer. And 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:04.160 he started hearing this, you think there's like a nerdy 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:09.280 version of inglorious bastards that could be made from Minsky's 0:09:09.360 --> 0:09:12.800 experience in the Navy. So instead of being these these 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:17.439 tough like special forces guys, it's like the brilliant mathematicians 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:20.319 and scientists who were part of the Navy and then 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:23.880 went on to go and do other things. Um Minsky, 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:29.120 after he left the Navy, joined well. He attended Harvard University, 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.760 and this is where we really get a first look 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:35.240 at how he was interested in so many different fields 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:39.920 that collectively lent themselves to this idea of artificial intelligence. 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:45.040 He studied psychology, and he studied neurophysiology and physics. When 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:49.040 he graduated, his degree was in mathematics. But he was 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.560 interested in all this stuff while he was in school. Yes, 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:54.960 he moved around a lot like he He says quote. 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.560 I was nominally a physics major, but I also took 0:09:57.600 --> 0:10:02.200 courses in sociology and psychology. I got interested in neurology 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:05.360 around the end of high school. I started thinking about thinking. 0:10:05.559 --> 0:10:07.720 One of the things that got me started was wondering 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.680 why it was so hard to learn mathematics. You take 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:13.280 an hour a page to read this thing, and still 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.560 it doesn't make sense. Then suddenly it becomes so easy, 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.680 it's trivial. I had never thought about that before, but 0:10:19.720 --> 0:10:23.439 he's exactly right about understanding math concepts. It's always been 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.439 that way for me. That you can go over how 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:29.200 to use a certain operator. You know, you're learning a 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:32.880 new type of mathematical function or operation, and it's just 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.800 banging your head against a wall until you get it. 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:37.679 And then as soon as you get it, it's it 0:10:38.240 --> 0:10:41.280 seems so simple, it's stupid. Yeah, this was how I 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.280 experienced math when I was in high school. I remember 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.960 by the time I got to trigonometry, uh it was 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.800 it didn't take very long for that switch to click 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:53.320 in my head where I would see what I was 0:10:53.320 --> 0:10:56.520 supposed to do and understand why I was doing it 0:10:56.559 --> 0:11:00.280 that way. It wasn't until I hit Calculus, and I'm 0:11:00.320 --> 0:11:04.080 not certain what the roadblock was, but for some reason, 0:11:04.080 --> 0:11:07.040 when I hit Calculus, that switch would take longer and 0:11:07.080 --> 0:11:10.920 longer to click. And I would often attribute that to 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:12.559 the fact that I think the way it was being 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:15.560 taught was here's how you do this, not here's why 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.400 you do this. So I think it also depends on 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.320 your approach to learning that concept. But I totally get 0:11:21.320 --> 0:11:24.760 what he's saying. Where you look at something and it 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:28.120 just feels like I could read this for the twentieth time, 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:30.360 but it's still not going to become any more clear 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:32.679 to me, and then two hours later, when you're doing 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.400 something totally different, you just think, oh wait, now I 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:39.240 get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it says something very 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.040 interesting about human cognition. And I think this insight that 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:45.480 he mentions here could very well come into play when 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:50.320 we're talking about how you construct intelligence from base parts, uh, 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:54.760 because there's something happening here. There's something about intuition and 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:59.280 about maybe the formation of pathways like you would have 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:01.480 in your old at work, where you know, once the 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:03.880 pathway is set, now you can find your way back 0:12:03.920 --> 0:12:06.320 there quite quite easily. Yeah, you could even think of 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:08.880 that as being, you know, make it an analogy of 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.880 a physical pathway through a forest. Like the first time 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.800 you go and make a path, you're cutting your way through. 0:12:15.880 --> 0:12:18.440 It's a lot of work. Uh. It might even be 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:20.600 hard for you to retrace it the first time, But 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:22.360 after you've done it a couple of times, there's a 0:12:22.400 --> 0:12:25.600 pretty worn path there that's much easier to follow. It's 0:12:25.679 --> 0:12:29.720 it's a fitting analogy in many ways. But Minsky also had, 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:32.720 as we've said, very eclectic interests when he was in school. 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.400 For example, there is all throughout his life he was 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:39.160 interested in music, and I love what he says about 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:42.120 music here. This is another interesting thing about cognition that 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:44.880 I'll get to in this. He says, quote, I had 0:12:44.920 --> 0:12:47.800 also taken a number of music courses with Irving Fine. 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:50.560 He usually gave me ces or d's, but he kept 0:12:50.640 --> 0:12:54.080 encouraging me to come back. He was a tremendously honest man. 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:58.840 Is that referring to the season d's. I'm not sure. Uh. 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:01.840 He says he was a tremendously honest man. I think 0:13:01.840 --> 0:13:05.319 the problem was that I was basically an improviser, one 0:13:05.320 --> 0:13:08.640 of those people who can occasionally improvise an entire fugue 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.800 in satisfactory form without much conscious thought or plan. The 0:13:12.880 --> 0:13:15.600 trouble is, the more I work on a piece deliberately, 0:13:15.800 --> 0:13:20.520 the worse it gets. I can totally get behind this too, 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:24.240 because you know, we're both writers, and I'm sure that 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:26.880 I know what he's talking about. There's been experiences where 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:29.440 you'll sit down and you just you get a nugget 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:34.040 of inspiration and you just start writing. And why you 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:35.640 end up whether you may have to go back and 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.400 revise a little bit, but in large part, it's just 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:40.920 it feels really satisfying. And there are other times when 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:43.000 you think I have an idea, I'm gonna go ahead 0:13:43.000 --> 0:13:45.079 and start the whole process of outlining all of this 0:13:45.200 --> 0:13:47.360 and then blocking it all out, and then I'll actually 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:49.960 get around to writeing it, and then, like you know, 0:13:50.440 --> 0:13:53.800 two hours later, you're just like, I don't know, whatever 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:56.240 made me think this was worth putting down on paper. Yeah, 0:13:56.280 --> 0:13:58.440 I know exactly what you mean. I mean usually, I 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.640 would say for most people and for myself, more work 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.040 leads to improvement, but not all the time. Sometimes you 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:08.320 can just write a thing to death. The more you 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:13.040 keep tinkering with it, the less interesting it becomes. Uh So, 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:17.400 by nineteen fifty one, he had graduated Harvard the year before, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.480 and then he goes and joins Princeton University for postgraduate studies, 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:25.040 and uh that same year he built the world's first 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:28.200 neural network simulator. And this is this is a thing 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.560 that is worth noting. It's a neural network simulator in 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.720 nineteen fifty one, So try to imagine that this is 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:38.800 not based on microchips. No. Um. Also, it was called SNARK, 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:41.920 which is great. It's s n A r C. And 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:46.400 that stands for stochastic Neural analog Reinforcement Calculator, which really 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:49.920 clears it all up. Uh. Stochastic is one of those 0:14:49.920 --> 0:14:51.840 words that's going to pop up a couple of times 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:53.880 as we talk about this. In case you aren't familiar 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:57.320 with the term, it essentially means random. That's that's kind 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.680 of a easy way of translating it. Uh So. He 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:04.480 graduated Princeton in nineteen fifty four with a doctorate in mathematics. 0:15:04.840 --> 0:15:07.600 The following year, in fifty five, he invented the confocal 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:12.040 scanning microscope, which actually uses a little spatial penhole inside 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.080 the lens, and the purpose of that is to filter 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.080 out all the light that would not be in focus, 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.640 so it therefore creates a higher resolution image of whatever 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:23.480 it is you're looking at through the microscope. So it's 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:28.200 kind of just really improving resolution now. In nineteen fifties seven, 0:15:28.720 --> 0:15:32.720 Marvin Minsky began to work for m I T. Massachusetts 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:38.080 Institute of Technology, and he was specifically interested in researching 0:15:38.080 --> 0:15:43.360 computers in order to understand human thought, which uh might 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.880 seem counterintuitive to some people, like why would you look 0:15:45.880 --> 0:15:48.000 at computers in order to get a better understanding of 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:51.240 how humans think? There it was a really good analogy, 0:15:51.600 --> 0:15:54.200 I thought. In um one of the pieces we looked 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.080 at it was on edge dot org that was talking 0:15:57.120 --> 0:15:59.960 about it was interviewing different people with recollections about Mints 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.840 his life. But there was one part of this piece 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:06.160 that talked about how, even though the analogy was not perfect, 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:10.200 if you were a person today who wanted to understand 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:13.960 how birds fly, probably one of the easiest ways to 0:16:14.000 --> 0:16:17.200 start would be to look at how airplanes work. Even 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:19.640 though airplanes and birds work in a different way, you 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.960 can start getting the principles about what you know how 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:25.840 things stay aloft in the air by looking at what 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.440 an airplane needs to do in order to not fall. 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.720 And I think the same thing could be true about 0:16:31.800 --> 0:16:36.760 computers and brains. Both do computation, both to information processing. 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:39.040 So if you look at a thing that's kind of 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:42.800 graceful and mysterious, like a human mind, and you want 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:44.480 to try to understand it, it it might be a good 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.000 place to start to say, Okay, how does information processing 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:52.320 work in a machine? Yeah, I mean, I I'm always 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.320 hesitant about that. I there are a lot of things 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.720 that Minsky talks about that I like a lot, but 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:02.120 it's because it lates to the mind, not the brain. 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:07.120 And uh it's because I know that computer's process information 0:17:07.160 --> 0:17:09.800 in a very different way than the way we think 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:12.720 in general. I mean, if you're talking about classical computers 0:17:12.720 --> 0:17:16.520 and the neural networks that we have in our in 0:17:16.560 --> 0:17:18.840 the wet ware we have in our heads. Uh, So 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:23.480 I'm always hesitant to make that comparison. However, when you 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.960 go to an abstract level of the human mind as 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.199 opposed to the human brain, then suddenly these conversations make 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:32.120 a lot more sense to me, and I'm a lot 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:36.040 more um inclined to agree and engage on that level 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.680 as opposed to just crossing my arms and going yeah, well, 0:17:39.720 --> 0:17:41.760 I mean I think it plays on the same principle 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.280 as the idea of the universal computer, right that if 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:47.040 you have a touring machine, you know you have a 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:52.040 basic universal computer. It doesn't matter what the hardware is. 0:17:52.320 --> 0:17:54.960 If you can do the basic computing functions, you can 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.400 do the same job as a different kind of computer 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:01.760 that uses different hardware, right right, Well, moving on with 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:04.680 our little biography on Marvin Minsky before we get into 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:09.360 some more details about his specific ideas in fifty eight 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:11.879 or fifty nine. And the reason why I put that 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:14.640 down is because depending on what source you read, some 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.560 site that uh, this happened in nineteen fifty eight, others 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.560 in nineteen fifty nine. My suspicion as this particular thing 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:22.919 took a long time to happen and probably started in 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.360 fifty eight and became official in fifty nine. Uh. Minsky 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:28.920 partnered with a man named John McCarthy who was a 0:18:28.920 --> 0:18:31.440 professor of electrical engineering at m I t and together 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:35.320 they formed the m I t Ai Laboratory. And as 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.000 a side note, John McCarthy is generally attributed as the 0:18:38.080 --> 0:18:41.000 person who actually coined the phrase artificial intelligence in the 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.800 mid nineteen fifties, I didn't know. Yeah, so he was another, uh, 0:18:46.280 --> 0:18:49.359 founding father of the science of artificial intelligence. Like you know, 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:51.240 if you were to make a list, you'd have people 0:18:51.240 --> 0:18:55.840 like Ada Lovelace and Alan Turing and Marvin Minsky and 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:58.760 John McCarthy all on that list easily. I mean, you 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:02.080 would not want to leave them off. He would. Minsky, 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:04.080 that is, would stay with m i T for the 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.840 rest of his career. He became the Donner Professor of 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.600 Science in nineteen seventy four and the Toshiba Professor of Media, 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:13.800 Arts and Sciences at the m i T Media Lab 0:19:14.000 --> 0:19:17.879 in nineteen Yeah. Well, I think we should now just 0:19:18.200 --> 0:19:22.200 transition to a more general discussion of what were some 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:28.800 of Minsky's influential ideas, concepts, and books, because, as we've 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:31.919 said earlier, he was massively influential. We we don't have 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:33.879 time to talk about everything, but we want to highlight 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:37.240 a few interesting things that he brought forward and and uh, 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:40.800 A lot of his work kind of relates to this 0:19:40.960 --> 0:19:46.080 running theme of the whole and its parts. Yeah, like 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:49.320 so whole as in w h O L E uh, 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:53.440 the entirety and its parts, specifically with reference to intelligence. 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.439 Right that that's a running theme throughout a lot of 0:19:56.440 --> 0:20:00.639 his work. One of his early ideas something that he 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:04.280 called frames. It was this concept that he proposed in 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:09.399 nineteen and defined frames as the general information a computer 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:12.639 system would have to possess before it can make specific decisions. 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:14.800 So what do you mean by that? All Right? So 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:17.520 let's say that you've you've built yourself a robot and 0:20:17.560 --> 0:20:20.080 you want the robot to do things. In order for 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.239 the robot to to do the things you wanted to do, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.199 you have to teach the robot certain concepts. First, I 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:28.680 love that sentence. You want the robot to do things? Yeah, well, 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:30.840 let's you know, you could just build a robot, right, 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:33.560 I mean maybe maybe you're rawsom and you're just like, 0:20:33.600 --> 0:20:35.879 I just want some universal robots run around this place. 0:20:35.880 --> 0:20:37.639 But you know, I don't care if they do anything. No, 0:20:37.760 --> 0:20:39.920 you must send it upon the world with a mission. 0:20:40.040 --> 0:20:42.479 But if you here's a simple example, you've got a roomba. 0:20:43.240 --> 0:20:45.960 You've built a roomba. Well, before you can just set 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:48.880 a rumba down and have it vacuum of a room, 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.800 you've got to teach it general concepts, things like uh, walls, 0:20:52.920 --> 0:20:55.520 you know, Uh, the what happens if you come up 0:20:55.560 --> 0:20:57.800 to allege all this kind of stuff. You have to 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:00.200 teach it all of this before it can complete eat 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:03.040 the task it was built for. So one example that 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.040 is commonly sited is imagine you've got a computer system 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:09.200 and you've got a series of rooms, and these rooms 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:12.199 are connected to each other through doorways that actually have 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.879 doors on them. In order to have a this computer 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:18.439 system be able to navigate through those rooms, you know, 0:21:18.480 --> 0:21:21.800 presumably through some sort of robotic form, it would have 0:21:21.840 --> 0:21:24.919 to understand how doors work. What a door is, that 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:28.800 a door could swing either inward or outward, the various 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.080