Bergamoscienza is a wonderful event that for two weeks engulfs the cultural life of Bergamo, and is getting better and better organized each year. The opening conference this year was by Marvin Minsky, one of the original founders of the field of Artificial Intelligence. I started my professional life twenty years ago in AI, so this opportunity to meet him was especially interesting to me. Minsky spoke about the ideas behind his forthcoming* book “The Emotion Machine”, and told the people attending that the new paradigms now being worked on by those researchers that defy the stolid wisdom of the past fourty years, and the most promising to arrive to artificial systems that show common sense.
He will also give a supposedly more technical talk at the University of Bergamo on Monday which I plan to attend as well. *He was kind enough to autograph a printout for me of the first page of the book from his website, since it will be still a month before the book is available!