Renowned Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Marvin Minsky Joins Illinois Institute of Technology Metaphor Research Project
Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) announced that Marvin Minsky has joined IIT’s Autonomous Dynamic Analysis of Metaphor and Analogy (ADAMA) Project, working on developing new methods for understanding metaphors in multiple languages. Minsky, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists, is professor of media arts and sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Over the last 60 years, Minsky’s work has fundamentally transformed many fields, including artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, robotics, and optics. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and National Academy of Engineering, and has received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Turing Award, the Japan Prize, and the Benjamin Franklin Medal, among other awards and honors.
IIT’s ADAMA project, led by Associate Professor of Computer Science Shlomo Argamon, is developing a software system capable of identifying and understanding metaphors in multiple languages from very large amounts of data gathered from the Internet and other open sources. The project has been awarded $1.4 million for the first year of a projected five years by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), a research arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence via the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
The ADAMA software system, including its assessment process, will be adaptable to different social science application areas, and, if proven successful, will significantly advance scientific understanding of the relationship between language and culture.
“Professor Minsky brings unique strengths and a broad interdisciplinary perspective to the project,” says Argamon. “He has done foundational work in nearly all areas of intelligent computing, psychology, and education—we look forward to a very fruitful collaboration.”
The software, including its assessment process, will be adaptable to different social science application areas, and, if proven successful, will significantly advance scientific understanding of the relationship between language and culture.
The ADAMA team also includes neuroscientist Newton Howard, chairman and senior fellow of the Brain Sciences Foundation, and director of the synthetic intelligence laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; information retrieval expert Ophir Frieder, the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S. Chair in Computer Science and Information Processing and chair of the department of computer science at Georgetown University; cognitive scientist Yair Neuman, professor of education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; software engineer Mark Last, associate professor of information systems engineering and software engineering and head of the software engineering program, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; learning theorist Moshe Koppel, professor of computer science, Bar-Ilan University in Israel; Lt. Colonel (U.S. Army retired) David Johnson of the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC, and technology entrepreneur Dell Hines, CEO of Behavioral Media Networks.
Founded in 1890, IIT is a Ph.D.-granting university with more than 7,700 students in engineering, sciences, architecture, psychology, design, humanities, business and law. IIT's interprofessional, technology-focused curriculum is designed to advance knowledge through research and scholarship, to cultivate invention improving the human condition, and to prepare students from throughout the world for a life of professional achievement, service to society, and individual fulfillment. Visit www.iit.edu.
