|
At various speaking venues around the world, both John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky had been introduced as "the father of modern AI." While I never found either to have much of a sense of humour, Minsky once responded that if they were both referred to as "fathers" of AI, it was clear why there was no mother.
So let's think of John as the "uncle" of Canadian artificial intelligence. When he came to Toronto from Princeton, he came to his newly adopted country with a formal background that some might view as "semantics free." But apparently the Toronto climate and some real Greek restaurants helped him see how to exploit his Ph.D. experience in a hew direction: artificial intelligence.
John helped make Canada a place where a graduate students interested in AI could stay in Canada and do good work and gain respect. Those students of his who are sitting in the audience now are certainly evidence of that, but there are others of us that also enjoy the benefits from his positive impact and role model. Many of the current generation of Canadian AI researchers "grew up" within the CSCSI community to which John made such a strong contribution.
So today, you are all celebrating John's career, and paying your respects to him for making all of our own careers just a little bit better. I know he made a difference for me, and I wish I could be there now … but I can't, so I'll have to count on you all to give Uncle John a hug for me.
Cheers,
Randy
|
from Robin Cohen, University of Waterloo, June 27, 2009