Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...

Wed Aug 26 07:36:42 EDT 2026

It was Minsky himself who said he was the devil.  I was actually at the
AI50 and heard the repeat of it :-)

On Fri, Aug 21, 2026 at 8:59 AM Asim Roy <ASIM.ROY at asu.edu> wrote:

> Hava, you are not dead. Those statements of Marvin Minsky and Jerry Fodor
> reflect the bitterness of those days. I have also heard a connectionist
> call Marvin a “devil” in an acceptance speech for an award.
>
>
>
> Asim Roy
>
> Professor, Information Systems
>
> Arizona State University
>
> Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Asim Roy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!NHg1P4byXZZmMFLMgr8A4dQNxSlqyvsqWef4wrPXtCXR0f0bo0eMm-rIF8G6ZV0$>
>
> Asim Roy | iSearch (asu.edu) <https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/9973>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Hava Siegelmann <hava at umass.edu>
> *Sent:* Thursday, August 20, 2026 8:29 AM
> *To:* Asim Roy <ASIM.ROY at asu.edu>
> *Cc:* Gary Marcus <gary.marcus at nyu.edu>; Stephen José Hanson <
> jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>; director at inc.ucsd.edu;
> connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> This is amazing I love it - dead !
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 8:30 AM Asim Roy <ASIM.ROY at asu.edu> wrote:
>
> I had some communication with Marvin Minsky and Jerry Fodor years ago.
> Here are two quotes from them:
>
>
>
> 1. Marvin Minsky: "Don’t pay any attention to the critics. Don’t even
> ignore them.” -By Sam Goldwyn
>
>
>
> 2. Jerry Fodor: “Arguing with Connectionists is like arguing with
> zombies; both are dead, but neither has noticed it.”
>
>
>
> And here’s a note from a neuroscience pioneer Horace Barlow, Darwin’s
> great-grandson (Horace Barlow - Wikipedia
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horace_Barlow>), winner of many
> neuroscience prizes. Without his pioneering work poking into frog brains
> with microelectrodes, we would NOT have AI as we see it today. The
> grandmother cell theory essentially points to where cognition exists in an
> abstract form. And there is plenty of neurophysiological evidence for such
> single cell abstractions, starting with line orientation cells.
>
>
> ======================================================================================================================================
>
> Dear Asim
>
> Yes, I would like to join your group, though I would (again) like to make
> it clear that the grandmother cell theory is not mine, though I still hold
> that something conforming amazingly well to what was conceptualised by
> Jerry Lettvin 50 years ago, really does exist!
>
> I am still actively interested in the topic, and have just sent off the
> final proofs of an essay bearing on it. I shall send you a copy of the
> final proof as soon as I am allowed to circulate it, and of course the more
> widely discussed it is the better pleased I shall be, though I fear that what
> I have written will not be universally accepted, at least at first!
>
> Best regards
>
> Horace
>
>
> =============================================================================================================
>
>
>
> Asim Roy
>
> Professor, Information Systems
>
> Arizona State University
>
> Lifeboat Foundation Bios: Professor Asim Roy
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy__;!!IKRxdwAv5BmarQ!NHg1P4byXZZmMFLMgr8A4dQNxSlqyvsqWef4wrPXtCXR0f0bo0eMm-rIF8G6ZV0$>
>
> Asim Roy | iSearch (asu.edu) <https://isearch.asu.edu/profile/9973>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *Gary Marcus
> *Sent:* Wednesday, August 19, 2026 11:23 AM
> *To:* Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> *Cc:* director at inc.ucsd.edu; connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Re: Connectionists: FW: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> yep: neural networks ascended, pushed symbols out of the way, and then
> symbols came back relabeled as harnesses, loops code interpreters, and
> tools.
>
>
>
> neurosymbolic AI, the hybrid of the two approaches, clearly beat either of
> the two alternatives on their own.
>
>
>
> claude code, biggest recent advance, shows that pretty clearly, when you
> look under the hood.
>
>
>
> gary
>
>
>
> On Aug 19, 2026, at 10:16 AM, Stephen José Hanson <jose at rubic.rutgers.edu>
> wrote:
>
> 
>
> Yes, historically this was an important meeting --and indeed the term AI
> was coined by John McCarthy who with several others put together the 1955
> meeting;  McCarthy also invented LISP after this meeting.   Part of the AI
> meeting at DM was political. McCarthy deliberately chose "Artificial
> Intelligence" partly to distance the new effort from Wiener's cybernetics
> and the neural network tradition. Which was thematic in the MACY meetings..
> which ended in 1953--2 years before the "AI" meeting.  McCarthy wanted to
> stake out a separate field with a symbolic/logical emphasis (in contrast
> to McCulloch and Pitts). So the naming wasn't just descriptive; it was a
> bit of a territorial move that arguably sidelined neural networks for
> decades until the connectionist revival in the 1980s (sorry Juergen).  And
> the more recent revolution associated with DL and LLMs more specifically.
> In the 1970s, this fueled the long term debate in Cognitive Science on
> Symbols/Rules vs Vectors/NN.
>
> Well at least we know how that turned out.
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> On 8/17/26 13:30, Terry Sejnowski wrote:
>
> Jean-Marc -
>
> I was there and gave a talk, the only one on neural networks.  I learned a
> lot from the other speakers.
>
> I just listened to the questions at the end of my talk.  I pretty much
> predicted what was going to happen in AI and thought it would take 50
> years.  I was wrong, it took less than 20 years.
>
> One of the questions at the end was about intelligent aliens who appear
> and don't have human brains.
> This was a set piece in my recent book on ChatGPT and the Future of AI,
> where ChatGPT is the alien.
>
> I gave my version of that meeting in my first book on the Deep Learning
> Revolution.  Every talk that reported progress did so because they had
> enough data to analyze, including Gene Charniak who was trying to parse
> sentences and Takeo Kanade working on computer vision (These two talks are
> not included in the list).  At the end Marvin Minsky accused them for just
> working on applications, not real AI.
>
> Terry
>
> ------
>
> On 8/17/2026 9:18 AM, Fellous, Jean-Marc wrote:
>
> In case you did not see this: Some amazing lectures and (now historical)
> perspectives… the most interesting parts are when they tried and predicted
> the future of AI!
>
>
>
> *From:* Connectionists <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
> <connectionists-bounces at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu> *On Behalf Of *George
> Cybenko
> *Sent:* Monday, August 17, 2026 6:00 AM
> *To:* connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu
> *Subject:* Connectionists: AI at 50 videos...
>
>
>
> In 2006, we held a 50th anniversary conference at Dartmouth to commemorate
>
> the historic 1956 meeting that coined the term "artificial intelligence."
> At that time,
>
> five of the surviving original participants attended.  Today they are all
> gone.
>
>
>
> I just recently posted videos of the talks from the AI at 50 meeting at
>
>
>
> https://sites.dartmouth.edu/cybenko/dartmouth-ai50-videos/
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/sites.dartmouth.edu/cybenko/dartmouth-ai50-videos/__;!!Mih3wA!HX5M154b9l4fIHZdxakK00FZ4H1IPqVHrV_pC-lh-4XwoZ6CvDp7SyXZ-ObDk5oWYIct3ux47KDlf3KvyIoMq7VLCwxY0JhC$>
>
>
>
> INobody foresaw what is happening in AI today and in fact,
>
> there were several digs against neural networks etc.
>
>
>
> Enjoy!
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> George Cybenko
>
> --
>
> George Cybenko, Dorothy and Walter Gramm Professor of Engineering
>
> Dartmouth College, 8000 Cummings Hall, Hanover NH 03755 USA
>
>
>
> email:          gvc at dartmouth.edu
>
> FAX:            603 646-9024
>
> Cell:           603 369-1133
>
> Assistant:      Ellen Wirta, 603 646-9672, Ellen.K.Wirta at Dartmouth.edu
>
>
>
> --
>
> <signature.jpg>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
>
> Hava T. Siegelmann, Ph.D.
>
> Provost Professor
>
> Director, BINDS Lab (Biologically Inspired Neural Dynamical Systems)
>
> Dept. of Computer Science
>
> Core member, Program of Neuroscience and Behavior
>
> University of Massachusetts Amherst
>
> Amherst, MA, 01003
>
> Phone: 413-540-6826
>
> LAB WEBSITE: http://binds.cs.umass.edu/
>
>
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