Despite machine learning’s successes, the knowledge engineers remain unconvinced. They believe that its limitations will soon become apparent, and the pendulum will swing back. Marvin Minsky, an MIT professor and AI pioneer, is a prominent member of this camp. Minsky is not just skeptical of machine learning as an alternative to knowledge engineering, he’s skeptical of any unifying ideas in AI. Minsky’s theory of intelligence, as expressed in his book The Society of Mind, could be unkindly characterized as “the mind is just one damn thing after another.” The Society of Mind is a laundry list
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