> Eventually, I dismissed Minsky’s theory as an interesting relic of AI history, far removed from the sleek deep learning models and monolithic AI systems rising to prominence.
That was my read of it when I checked it out a few years ago, obsessed with explicit rules based lisp expert systems and "good old fashioned AI" ideas that never made much sense, were nothing like how our minds work, and were obvious dead ends that did little of anything actually useful (imo). All that stuff made the AI field a running joke for decades.
This feels a little like falsely attributing new ideas that work to old work that was pretty different? Is there something specific from Minsky that would change my mind about this?
I recall reading there were some early papers that suggested some neural network ideas more similar to the modern approach (iirc), but the hardware just didn't exist at the time for them to be tried. That stuff was pretty different from the mainstream ideas at the time though and distinct from Minsky's work (I thought).
spiderxxxx · 58m ago
I think you may be mistaking Society of Mind with a different book. It's not about lisp or "good old fashioned AI" but about how the human mind may work - something that we could possibly simulate. It's observations about how we perform thought. The ideas in the book are not tied to a specific technology, but about how a complex system such as the human brain works.
suthakamal · 20m ago
I don't think we're talking about the same book. Society of Mind is definitely not an in-the weeds book that digs into things like lisp, etc. in any detail. Instead of changing your mind, I'd encourage you to re-read Minsky's book if you found my essay compelling, and ignore it if not.
drannex · 1h ago
Good timing, I just started rereading my copy last week to get my vibe back.
Not only is it great for tech nerds such as ourselves for tech, but its a great philosophy on thinking about and living life. Such a phenomenal read, easy, simple, wonderful format, wish more tech-focused books were written in this style.
generalizations · 2h ago
Finally someone mentions this. Maybe I've been in the wrong circles, but I've been wishing I had the time to implement a society-of-mind-inspired system ever since llamacpp got started, and I never saw anyone else reference it until now.
fishnchips · 2h ago
Having studied sociology and psychology in my previous life I am now surprised how relevant some of the almost forgotten ideas became to my current life as a dev!
colechristensen · 2h ago
MIT OpenCourseWare course including video lectures taught by Minsky himself:
As a teen in the '90s, I dismissed Marvin Minsky’s 1986 classic, The Society of Mind, as outdated. But decades later, as monolithic large language models reach their limits, Minsky’s vision—intelligence emerging from modular "agents"—seems strikingly prescient. Today’s Mixture-of-Experts models, multi-agent architectures, and internal oversight mechanisms are effectively operationalizing his insights, reshaping how we think about building robust, scalable, and aligned AI systems.
detourdog · 1h ago
I was very inspired by the book in 1988-89 as a second year industrial design student. I think this has been a thread on HN about 2 years ago.
That was my read of it when I checked it out a few years ago, obsessed with explicit rules based lisp expert systems and "good old fashioned AI" ideas that never made much sense, were nothing like how our minds work, and were obvious dead ends that did little of anything actually useful (imo). All that stuff made the AI field a running joke for decades.
This feels a little like falsely attributing new ideas that work to old work that was pretty different? Is there something specific from Minsky that would change my mind about this?
I recall reading there were some early papers that suggested some neural network ideas more similar to the modern approach (iirc), but the hardware just didn't exist at the time for them to be tried. That stuff was pretty different from the mainstream ideas at the time though and distinct from Minsky's work (I thought).
Not only is it great for tech nerds such as ourselves for tech, but its a great philosophy on thinking about and living life. Such a phenomenal read, easy, simple, wonderful format, wish more tech-focused books were written in this style.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-868j-the-society-of-mind-fall-...