Marvin Minsky

Computer Science American 1927 – 2016 378 quotes

Co-founder of MIT AI Lab, pioneer of AI

Quotes by Marvin Minsky

The brain is not a single, monolithic entity. It's a collection of specialized agents.

The Society of Mind 1985

There is no 'magic' in the brain. It's just a very complex machine.

Various interviews and writings

The future of AI is not about building a single, super-intelligent machine, but about building a society of intelligent machines.

Various interviews and writings

The biggest problem in AI is not building intelligent machines, but understanding what intelligence is.

Various interviews and writings

We don't need to fear AI. We need to understand it.

Various interviews and writings

The human mind is not a single, unified entity, but a collection of interacting processes.

The Society of Mind 1985

The more we learn about the brain, the more we realize it's just a very complicated computer.

Various interviews and writings

The idea that there's some kind of 'ghost in the machine' is just a way of avoiding the hard work of understanding how the brain works.

Various interviews and writings

Intelligence is not a single thing. It's a collection of many different abilities.

The Society of Mind 1985

The biggest obstacle to AI is not technology, but our own misconceptions about intelligence.

Various interviews and writings

We should not be afraid of machines that think. We should be afraid of machines that don't.

Various interviews and writings

The brain is a machine that makes models of the world, and then uses those models to predict the future.

Various interviews and writings

The idea of a 'soul' is just a placeholder for what we don't understand about the brain.

Various interviews and writings

The future of humanity depends on our ability to build intelligent machines.

Various interviews and writings

The brain is not a general-purpose computer. It's a collection of specialized problem-solvers.

The Society of Mind 1985

We are not going to understand the brain until we can build one.

Various interviews and writings

The biggest challenge in AI is not to make machines intelligent, but to make them understand us.

Various interviews and writings

The idea of a 'conscious' machine is not a mystery. It's just a very complex form of self-monitoring.

Various interviews and writings

The biggest mistake we can make about AI is to think of it as a single thing.

Various interviews and writings

The brain is a collection of little agents, each doing its own thing, and somehow they all work together to produce what we call 'mind'.

The Society of Mind 1985