- Chris McKinstry
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Chris McKinstry Born February 12, 1967
Winnipeg, CanadaDied January 23, 2006
Santiago, ChileOccupation AI researcher Kenneth Christopher McKinstry (February 12, 1967 – January 23, 2006) was a researcher in artificial intelligence. He led the development of the MISTIC project which was launched in May 1996. He founded the Mindpixel project in July 2000, and closed it in December 2005. McKinstry's AI work and similar early death dovetailed with another contemporary AI researcher, Push Singh and his MIT Open Mind Common Sense Project.[1][2]
Contents
Life
McKinstry was a Canadian citizen. Born in Winnipeg, he resided several years in Chile. Since 1999, he lived in Antofagasta as a VLT operator for the European Southern Observatory. At the end of 2004, he moved back to Santiago, Chile.
Suffering from bipolar disorder, McKinstry had an armed standoff with police in Toronto in 1990.[3][4]
McKinstry committed suicide in 2006. Before his death McKinstry designed an experiment with two cognitive scientists to study the dynamics of thought processes using data from his Mindpixel project. This work has now been published in Psychological Science in its January, 2008 issue,[5] with McKinstry as posthumous first author.
McKinstry is the subject of an upcoming documentary called The Man Behind the Curtain which recounts his innovative work and his mental battles.[6]
Comparisons with Push Singh
There has been some public note of the similarity between the suicide of Chris McKinstry and that of Push Singh, another AI researcher, a little over a month later. Both of their AI projects, McKinstry's Mindpixel project and Singh's MIT-backed Open Mind Common Sense, had similar trajectories over the last six years. (Wired News) Both McKinstry and Singh were Canadians at some point (although Singh was born in India) of approximately the same age who had been in contact over the years in the same AI communities (AI Usenet 2000) regarding their similar projects. Both were heterodox AI researchers who were pursuing closely themed endeavours and beta software projects.[7]
Articles
- Minimum Intelligent Signal Test: An Alternative Turing Test, Canadian Artificial Intelligence #41
- A Closer Look at Life in the Summer of '76, Mindjack Magazine, 2001
- Passage through science, Mindjack Magazine, 2001
- Twenty Twenty: Astronomical Vision, Mindjack Magazine, 2002
- A Hacker Goes to Iraq, Article posted by Chris McKinstry, The Hacker Quarterly, Vol 20 Number one, Page 9, [3]
- Mind as Space, Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer, Springer Science, 2008
- McKinstry, C., Dale, R., & Spivey, M.J. (2008). Action dynamics reveal parallel competition in decision making. Psychological Science, 19, 22-24.
References
- ^ The Streeb-Greebling Diaries: Legends in AI: Chris McKinstry
- ^ [1],[2]
- ^ http://groups.google.ca/group/wpg.general/msg/2764a9158359f7b8?dmode=source
- ^ http://groups.google.ca/group/wpg.general/msg/42073915fd22e6ea?dmode=source
- ^ McKinstry, C., Dale, R., & Spivey, M.J. (2008). Action dynamics reveal parallel competition in decision making. Psychological Science, 19, 22-24. http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/index.cfm?journal=ps&content=ps/19_1
- ^ http://themanbehindthecurtainfilm.com
- ^ For a few online comparisons on McKinstry and Singh, see Streeb-Greebling, KurzweilAInet, Soup, and the latest story published by Wired Magazine, Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened? (Jan 18, 2008). Similarly, Luis von Ahn (McArthur Genius Award winner) also mentions both McKinstry and Singh in the same breath (p.67) in his important Carnegie Mellon 2005 dissertation on Human Computation
External links
- http://www.oocities.org/gactheripper/MIndPixelPageFront.html Background Information Site regarding Mindpixel, ICONA, Realist Party of Canada, & CR6.
- Mindpixel (at the internet archive)
- PBS article on McKinstry and Mindpixel by Robert X. Cringely
- Critical summary of Chris McKinstry’s life and work on the Robot Wisdom blog
- Archive of McKinstry’s CR6 online soap opera
- Blog post about Mindpixel and Chris McKinstry's suicide Contains much background and insider information on the project. Posted Saturday, May 6, 2006
- Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened? Wired Magazine article on McKinstry's and Singh's similar AI work and disturbed personal lives. Posted Friday, Jan 18, 2008
- Upcoming documentary film about the life and work of Chris McKinstry.
Categories:- Artificial intelligence researchers
- People from Winnipeg
- Psychedelic drug advocates
- Scientists who committed suicide
- Suicides by gas
- 1967 births
- 2006 deaths
- People with bipolar disorder
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