This week in The History of AI at AIWS.net – in 1967 Marvin Minsky was quoted saying, “Within a generation … the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ will substantially be solved.”
Similar to H. A. Simon’s writings from the same era, Minsky’s prediction was stated in his work in the 60s, after the bloom of AI development in the advent of the Dartmouth Conference. Optimism was running high, and advocates and academics for AI envisioned a romantic vision of what it could be. However, his prediction did not come to fruition, as AI development suffered stagnations and the like, most notably the first AI Winter, whose beginnings ironically was contributed to by Minsky himself.
Marvin Minksy was an important pioneer in the field of AI. He penned the research proposal for the Dartmouth Conference, which coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”, and he was a participant in it when it was hosted the next summer. Minsky would also co-founded the MIT AI labs, which went through different names, and the MIT Media Laboratory. In terms of popular culture, he was an adviser to Stanley Kubrick’s acclaimed movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. He won the Turing Award for his impact on AI in 1969.
As with Herbert Simon, this quote was an event in the history of AI due to its display of the sentiments of optimism of the time. Furthermore, Marvin Minsky was one, if not the, most important figure in the development of Artificial Intelligence. His predictions about AI during its rise in the 60s are still discussed about to this day.