We humans are not the end of evolution, so if we can make a machine that's as smart as a person, we can probably also make one that's much smarter. There's no point in making just another person. You want to make one that can do things we can't.
Interpretation
Humans are just one step in evolution, and technology should aim to create machines that exceed human capabilities.
Marvin Minsky highlights the idea that humanity is not the final result of evolution, suggesting that by creating artificial intelligence, we can exceed our own limitations. He advocates for the development of machines that possess intelligence far beyond that of humans, emphasizing the goal of innovation and progress rather than simply replicating human intellect.
In practice
During a technology conference to inspire innovation among young engineers.
If you understand something in only one way, then you don't really understand it at all. The secret of what anything means to us depends on how we've connected it to all other things we know. Well-connected representations let you turn ideas around in your mind, to envision things from many perspectives until you find one that works for you. And that's what we mean by thinking!
There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI; for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing.
You don't understand anything unless you understand there are at least 3 ways.
I think every person either inherits or eventually makes up their own idea of what they are and who they are and what caused the world to be, and it seems to me that these stories of creation myth, adopted by different cultures - most of them are less insightful than the stories made up by individual poets and writers.
I believe that everyone has to construct a mental model of what they are and where they came from and why they are as they are, and the word soul in each person is the name for that particular mish-mash of those fully formed ideas of one's nature.
If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do.
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
People are so bad at driving cars that computers don't have to be that good to be much better. Any time you stand in line at the D.M.V. and look around, you're like, Oh, my God, I wish all these people were replaced by computer drivers.
The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed: the major record labels let Apple take over the digital-music business; Blockbuster refused to buy Netflix for a mere fifty million dollars; Excite turned down the chance to acquire Google for less than a million dollars.
I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: "Macintosh - We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end".
I believe the continually advancing Information Revolution will lend us the wisdom and strength to address humanity's previously unsolvable problems and help us make a positive impact on all of society.
[The internet] ought to be like clay, rather than a sculpture that you observe from a distance.
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