Marvin Minsky, pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, died in Boston on Sunday night. He was 88.
His family said the cause was a cerebral hemorrhage, the New York Times reported.
Professor Minsky, a revered computer science educator at MIT, laid the foundation for the field of artificial intelligence by demonstrating the possibilities of imparting common-sense reasoning to computers.
He co-founded the MIT Artificial Intelligence Project with his colleague John McCarthy in 1959.
Minsky’s other achievements in the 1950s included his design of a robotic hand. He also invented the first head-mounted graphical display, a precursor to the virtual reality headsets that are finally on the brink of commercialisation.
His distinctions included the Turing Award, the top award in the field of computer science, named after the British scientist who first predicted that machines would match human intelligence.