> Gina Miller <nanogirl@halcyon.com> wrote:
> > Besides, Marvin Minsky in person
> > can be the most contemptous person in the
> > room. His behavior at Extro 3 only pushes
> > my point home that many of the AI researchers
> > do *not* have our best interest in mind.
> ~I missed Extro 3, can you elaborate on this Minsky characterization?
I was there and found it fairly "interesting". Someone in the audience, I believe asked Marvin what he considered to be a stupid question (somebody correct me if this is wrong). Marvin's response was, I believe, in essence, "That's a stupid question, could you sit down so we could move onto the next question". The person refused and then things got very loud.
You have to realize that Marvin does this intentionally because he is trying to break up the "crappy" memes that most of us are stuck with. I would have to believe that someone who has spent 40 years thinking about AI problems knows a little more than the rest of us (though he certainly got Neural nets wrong...). So for there to be people who use what some consider to be "rudeness" as a technique to break up thought patterns, is not in my opinion a bad thing. I wouldn't however want the entire world to be like that.
You may be able to get a tape of that Extro3 session from EI if you want the gory details.
Robert