Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9, 1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research in artificial intelligence (AI).

Marvin Lee Minsky was born in New York City, to Henry, an eye surgeon, and Fannie (Reiser), a Zionist activist.

His doctoral dissertation was titled "Theory of neural-analog reinforcement systems and its application to the brain-model problem.

In 1951, Minsky built the first randomly wired neural network learning machine, SNARC.

[30] In the early 1970s, at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, Minsky and Papert started developing what came to be known as the Society of Mind theory.

Minsky says that the biggest source of ideas for the theory came from his work in trying to create a machine that uses a robotic arm, a videocamera, and a computer to build with children's blocks.

[31] Minsky also invented a "gravity machine" that will ring a bell if the gravitational constant changes, a theoretical possibility that is not expected to occur in the foreseeable future.

[33] Minsky is mentioned explicitly in Arthur C. Clarke's derivative novel of the same name, where he is portrayed as achieving a crucial breakthrough in artificial intelligence in the then-future 1980s, paving the way for HAL 9000 in the early 21st century: In the 1980s, Minsky and Good had shown how artificial neural networks could be generated automatically—self replicated—in accordance with any arbitrary learning program.

[34]In "The Law of Non-Contradiction", episode 3 of the television anthology series Fargo (Season 3), at least two allusions to Minsky are made.

[41] He cautioned that an artificial superintelligence designed to solve an innocuous mathematical problem might decide to assume control of Earth's resources to build supercomputers to help achieve its goal,[42] but believed that such scenarios are "hard to take seriously" because he felt confident that AI would be well tested before being deployed.

[54] In 2006, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Computer History Museum "for co-founding the field of artificial intelligence, creating early neural networks and robots, and developing theories of human and machine cognition.

[56] In 2014, Minsky won the Dan David Prize for "Artificial Intelligence, the Digital Mind".