Speaking in Tokyo after his award of the 50m yen – $350,000 Japan Prize, a prize awarded annually in several categories of science by the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan, Dr Marvin Minsky, professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Professor of Architecture and Planning at the Institute’s Media Lab, had several witty comments about the state of the artifical intelligence research, and the computer industry in general. He suggested that IBM had set the world back 10 years with its self-importantly named IBM Personal Computer – because unlike the humble Apple II, it had no graphics: people afraid of technology in IBM in the late 1950s decided not to follow any pure research themes, because that scared people. Regarded by some as the father of artificial intelligence, Dr Minsky appeared to be hoping for a more generalised approach to the discipline – learning common-sense like children do – and the representation of knowledge, using tools in accordance with the problem. Focus on expert systems, a very specialised area, Shanks dependencies, neural networks or other branches of the technology neglected the fact that different tools or methods needed to be used according to problem. He bemoaned the fact that few American students were interested in pure mathematics or in physics any more (80% of student studying maths at post-graduate level in the US are foreign-born), and worried about the effect this would have on research. Regarding the issue of receiving funding from Japanese corporations, Dr Minsky said that it was hard to avoid the temptation, because of the longer-term approach to project funding taken in Japan and the cuts in funding for research in the US. Dr Minsky was awarded the Japan Prize in the Technology of Integration – Design, Production and Control Technologies, specifically for several seminal papers setting the direction for artificial intelligence research. – Anita Byrnes
