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The Emotion Machine cover

The Emotion Machine

by Marvin Minsky

  • FINISHED
  • Finished April 2026
  • First published 2006

artificial intelligence cognitive science

Marvin Minsky, a founding father of artificial intelligence, argues that emotions are not a separate force from thinking but simply different ways of thinking.   The book proposes that the mind is a layered “Society of Resources” that switches between many ways of reasoning, such as common sense, reflection, and planning, depending on the problem in front of it, and uses that model to explain how a machine could one day think the way people do.