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Building my randomly wired neural network machine

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My endless sequence of lucky breaks
Marvin Minsky Scientist
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The fascinating thing was that because this building was still being constructed and half-empty, what I got was this room with some equipment. And next to it was a darkroom for developing photographs and all sorts of facilities and... here I am, a... a lowly undergraduate with more equipment than... than most professors have. Again it's just... when I look back on this, it just seems like an endless...endless sequence of lucky breaks.

Marvin Minsky (1927-2016) was one of the pioneers of the field of Artificial Intelligence, founding the MIT AI lab in 1970. He also made many contributions to the fields of mathematics, cognitive psychology, robotics, optics and computational linguistics. Since the 1950s, he had been attempting to define and explain human cognition, the ideas of which can be found in his two books, The Emotion Machine and The Society of Mind. His many inventions include the first confocal scanning microscope, the first neural network simulator (SNARC) and the first LOGO 'turtle'.

Listeners: Christopher Sykes

Christopher Sykes is a London-based television producer and director who has made a number of documentary films for BBC TV, Channel 4 and PBS.

Duration: 41 seconds

Date story recorded: 29-31 Jan 2011

Date story went live: 13 May 2011