In general we are least aware of what our minds do best.

This is a tricky domain because, unlike simple arithmetic, to solve a calculus problem - and in particular to perform integration - you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on.

If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do.

There was a failure to recognize the deep problems in AI; for instance, those captured in Blocks World. The people building physical robots learned nothing.

There are three basic approaches to AI: Case-based, rule-based, and connectionist reasoning.

We wanted to solve robot problems and needed some vision, action, reasoning, planning, and so forth. We even used some structural learning, such as was being explored by Patrick Winston.

Once when I was standing at the base, they started rotating the set and a big, heavy wrench fell down from the 12 o'clock position of the set, and got buried in the ground a few feet from me. I could have been killed!

In general we are least aware of what our minds do best.

I heard that the same thing occurred in a scene in Alien, where the creature pops out of the chest of a crewman. The other actors didn't know what was to happen; the director wanted to get true surprise.

By the way, it was his simulations that helped out in Jurassic Park - without them, there would have been only a few dinosaurs. Based on his techniques, Industrial Light and Magic could make whole herds of dinosaurs race across the screen.

The basic idea in case-based, or CBR, is that the program has stored problems and solutions. Then, when a new problem comes up, the program tries to find a similar problem in its database by finding analogous aspects between the problems.

No computer has ever been designed that is ever aware of what it's doing; but most of the time, we aren't either.

When David Marr at MIT moved into computer vision, he generated a lot of excitement, but he hit up against the problem of knowledge representation; he had no good representations for knowledge in his vision systems.

You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.

I think Lenat is headed in the right direction, but someone needs to include a knowledge base about learning.

Around 1967 Dan Bobrow wrote a program to do algebra problems based on symbols rather than numbers.

Societies need rules that make no sense for individuals. For example, it makes no difference whether a single car drives on the left or on the right. But it makes all the difference when there are many cars!

Kubrick's vision seemed to be that humans are doomed, whereas Clarke's is that humans are moving on to a better stage of evolution.

Stanley Kubrick knew we had good graphics around MIT and came to my lab to find out how to do it. We had some really good stuff. I was very impressed with Kubrick; he knew all the graphics work I had ever heard of, and probably more.

I believed in realism, as summarized by John McCarthy's comment to the effect that if we worked really hard, we'd have an intelligent system in from four to four hundred years.

Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines do things that would require intelligence if done by men.

I've done a little bit of everything now, but I would like to do a Western because I've never done that.

All comedians are, in a way, anarchists. Our job is to make fun of the existing world.

The enabling power of the Atonement strengthens us to do and be good and to serve beyond our own individual desire and natural capacity.

If you're a thinking person, the liver is interesting, but nothing is more intriguing than the brain.

Women are half the population and they know how to take care of themselves, if they are only given access to health care.

One thing I've found is that if you educate and show people the risk, they will do something about it.

There is a lot of growth taking place in capturing aspirational consumers and converting them to luxury as they evolve.

You have to control what you can control, not the entire game, and try to play the best soccer possible and play clean and be smart and professional.

Golf gives you an insight into human nature your own as well as your opponents.

Do what makes you happy. Keep it simple. Do the research. Work hard. Look ahead.

Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution, or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.

I have learnt that women are superior beings. They have a higher threshold of pain and are more understanding and accepting than men. Also, if you listen to them, you'll understand them better.

I would advise dancers, musicians and others in the entertainment industry to take up yoga, as it clears the mind and creates a sense of balance and stillness which is important for any performing artist.

Every happily married person I interviewed on my trip was grateful for his or her spouse thanking God daily for one another.

Comedy is king for me; it's the genre that everyone loves.

What society judged was not the severity of the disease but the social acceptability of the individuals affected with it

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

To be successful in my native France, where people speak the same language and understand me, is nothing.

The whole point about laughter is it's like mercury: you can't catch it, you can't catch what motivates it - that's why it's funny.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

There is not one New York but thousands - mixed-up conurbations and microclimates with their own internal logics and charms, dreams and juxtapositions, faces and tongues.

Action may not bring happiness but there is no happiness without action.

I grew up thinking anything was possible simply because of seeing women in power - like, you know, running the country. Which is a thought that continues to give Americans indigestion... Direction is about having a vision, but the practice of being a director is a con game - a confidence game.