Meet Marvin Minsky, MIT professor who predicted today’s multi-agent AI

Long before AI companies began building teams of specialised AI agents that collaborate to solve complex problems, legendary MIT professor Marvin Minsky had already proposed a strikingly similar way intelligence works. In his landmark 1986 book The Society of Mind, Minsky argued that intelligence is not the product of one all-powerful brain but the result of countless simple "agents" working together, each performing a specialised task. Nearly four decades later, as companies such as Anthropic increasingly explore multi-agent AI systems, his ideas have returned to the spotlight. Widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence, Minsky not only helped establish the field but also introduced concepts that continue to shape how scientists and engineers think about bui