In the year 2002, artificial intelligence was still in winter. Despite decades’ worth of effort, the dream of giving computers humanlike cognition and real world understanding has not materialized. A small group of scientists gathered at the “St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium” to look for a solution. AI pioneer Marvin Minsky and his protege Pushpinder were present. After the symposium, Minsky and Singh were joined by renowned philosopher Aaron Sloman
Published a paper about the group’s ideas on how to achieve humanlike AI.
This paper discusses the struggles of AI in the early 20th century. One sentence stands out in particular today. In a short paragraph of acknowledgments, the authors state that “This meeting was made feasible by the generous assistance of Jeffrey Epstein.” In fact, the symposium was held in Virgin Islands, where Epstein’s now famous island retreat is located. This event, as well as its execrable sponsor, reveals a lot about the state and future of AI.
A voracious sexual predator has managed to buy relationships with some of technology and science’s most prominent and influential figures. Epstein’s connections with Bill Gates and Minsky have been thoroughly documented. Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein survivor, claimed in a deposition that she was told to have sex at Epstein’s Island with Minsky. Minsky’s spouse, who says she accompanied him when he visited Epstein, and that they only went the New York and Palm Beach homes, has vehemently denounced the charge. This was made shortly before Minsky died and was revealed much later. Epstein died in jail in 2019 (don’t ask me how to decipher the conspiracy theories into one measly paraphrase), and Giuffre tragically committed suicide in 2025.
For Epstein’s vast majority of connections in science and technology, professional association with an alleged sexual predator became a humiliating, even damning fact. Epstein funded small gatherings that included prominent names. (
I myself went to the notorious
Epstein attended the 2002 “Billionaire Dinner”at TED, where he mingled alongside Sergey Brin and Jeff Bezos. He also met singer Naomi Judd and prominent scientists (some of whom flew on Epstein’s aircraft). John Brockman was a literary agent whose clientele included many of the top names in science. Epstein funded Brockman’s science-oriented nonprofit foundation.
My source who knew Epstein very well said that the financier seemed to be genuinely fascinated by scientist. The source claims that he is unaware of his crimes. They agreed to discuss Epstein under the condition of anonymity. The source said, “I saw him as an eccentric, wealthy man who liked to surround themselves with interesting people and scientist and who had many questions about the world.” Epstein was just as interested in a scientist’s personality as he did in their work. “I’m just a hobbyist when it comes to science,”
He told Jeffrey Mervis, a journalist in 2017. “But money, I understand. [and]
I’m pretty good at math.”
Invitation Only
Epstein’s spectre casts an ominous shadow over the 2002 symposium. How did this event come about? My source told me the previously unknown backstory. The source said that Jeffrey used to tell Marvin how much he admired him and how much he enjoyed talking with him about AI. The subject was not very popular in those years. My source said that at the time, people were sceptical about AI’s potential. The idea was born to host a small AI meeting with Minsky as the focal point. (It is not clear where the funding for this event came from.
Epstein made a $100,000 donation to Minksy’s research.
It was decided that the event would focus on ideas from Minsky’s star student, Singh. Singh wrote a short paper in 1996 called ”
The problem is that building such systems amounts to’solving AI.’ The problem is that building these systems is the same as’solving AI. The event was difficult to organize. The initial list of participants was lacking in star power, and it had to be supplemented. The guest list eventually grew to include Roger Schank. He is a celebrated AI theorist who has won numerous awards.
The obituary was marred by attending the event, and by serving for a short time as chief learning officer at Trump University. Doug Lenat was another participant. He invented the ambitious CYC Project, which involved humans typing in detail the explanations of everyday items into a database to aid AI research. Vernor Vinge was also in attendance, a science-fiction writer who is credited for the concept of the
AI singularity
Sloman, a UK philosopher who is now approaching 90 years old, was added later. He told me in an email earlier this week that he was not originally on Epstein’s invitation list. Sloman’s memory of the event, he says, is hazy. “I was added on the suggestion of Marvin Minsky. He recalls that Epstein had lavish resources and used a private aircraft to get them to the location.
Epstein made a $100,000 donation to Minksy’s research.
The problem is that building such systems amounts to’solving AI.’ The problem is that building these systems is the same as’solving AI. The event was difficult to organize. The initial list of participants was lacking in star power, and it had to be supplemented. The guest list eventually grew to include Roger Schank. He is a celebrated AI theorist who has won numerous awards.
The obituary was marred by attending the event, and by serving for a short time as chief learning officer at Trump University. Doug Lenat was another participant. He invented the ambitious CYC Project, which involved humans typing in detail the explanations of everyday items into a database to aid AI research. Vernor Vinge was also in attendance, a science-fiction writer who is credited for the concept of the
AI singularity
Sloman, a UK philosopher who is now approaching 90 years old, was added later. He told me in an email earlier this week that he was not originally on Epstein’s invitation list. Sloman’s memory of the event, he says, is hazy. “I was added on the suggestion of Marvin Minsky. He recalls that Epstein had lavish resources and used a private aircraft to get them to the location.
This symposium was held at a ritzy St. Thomas hotel, Virgin Islands. On one night, everyone went to Epstein’s private beach for a barbecue dinner. The working sessions were contentious. “There were times when there was a battle of egos and it was difficult to move the agenda forward. The source recalls that sometimes it delved into super technical stuff and other times on a more philosophy level. Epstein’s participation in the discussion seems to have been minimal. My source says that Jeffery was in and out of the room the entire time and had private conversations with some scientists. The source did not recall seeing a scene which Roger Schank described later in an interview with Slate. Schank reported that Epstein entered the conference with two young girls on his arms. Schank reported that Epstein was hugging and kissing the girls in the back while the scientists were discussing AI theory.
Egos and Infighting
Schank is right, the scientists ignored it. In retrospect, it was a warning sign that more was going on in Epsteinland other than scientific discussions. Singh’s assertion that a multipronged strategy was needed to solve the AI conundrum continued to be a source of debate among the scientists. Minsky agreed. The industry needed more theories to improve AI, as the various theories had failed.
Of course, that’s incorrect, and the meeting was in a way a last gasp for the logic-based Good Old Fashioned AI, which, according to Singh, failed. The generative AI models that we use today are largely devoid of theory. Their emergent understanding comes from neural-net machine-learning techniques and mountains of information. This technique has made AI more humanlike without the old-school AI theories that are thrown around in the Virgin Islands. The conclusions of the Common Sense Symposium are still relevant. Some scientists argue that neural networks alone cannot “solve” AI and that we need to combine these with more traditional reasoning based approaches to achieve the technology’s full potential.
During the second day of this symposium, the future of AI was brought into sharp focus. The day began with a few more arguments. Someone then brought up Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age (19459060), a science-fiction novel in which a magical book can teach children stories and answer questions. The prospect brought together the egoistic scientist. They speculated that AI would “conduct a conversation with[you]to help you understand a particular problem or achieve a certain goal.” According to their paper, you could discuss topics such as how to pick a car or house, how to learn a game or improve at a subject, or how to decide if you should go to the doctors. ChatGPT is, in other words, ChatGPT. The symposium concluded with an agreement to explore further how to make this vision a reality.
Push Singh was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Media Lab when he received his PhD a few more years later. He had also accepted a faculty role. He never took up the position. In 2006, he committed suicide. He was 33.
Ultimately, as with much of Epstein’s work, the St. Thomas Common Sense Symposium is more likely to be remembered for its unsavory host rather than for the ideas that emerged. While the scientists feasted on Epstein’s Island, the seeds of the real AI revolution were germination in the fertile soil of University of Toronto. Geoffrey Hinton, along with his colleagues, were developing deep learning techniques, which would later be the basis of generative AI. Epstein’s dilettante attempts in science may have been a success, but they did not make a significant impact on the world. Today’s headlines show that his crimes continue to reverberate. This is a copy of Steven Levy’s Backchannel Newsletter. Previous newsletters are available here.
