Biography:Chris McKinstry

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Short description: Chilean artificial intelligence researcher
Chris McKinstry
Born
Kenneth Christopher McKinstry

(1967-02-12)February 12, 1967
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
DiedJanuary 23, 2006(2006-01-23) (aged 38)
Santiago, Chile
OccupationArtificial intelligence 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][3]

Life

McKinstry was a Canadian citizen. Born in Winnipeg, he resided several years in Chile . From 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, with it lasting 7 1/2 hours. It ultimately concluded with McKinstry being hit with tear gas, but ending with no casualties [4][5]

In February 1997, Chris McKinstry started an online soap opera, CR6.[6][7] According to journalist Bartley Kives, around 700 people auditioned for the show, which only lasted for two months, before McKinstry left Winnipeg with "estimated debts in excess of $100,000".[8] McKinstry later claimed to have lost $1 million in the CR6 failure, and the many people he recruited to build the soap opera, including photographers, writers, a director, and several prominent businesses, never received any of the money owed to them for their work.[citation needed]

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 was later published in Psychological Science in its January 2008 issue,[9] with McKinstry as posthumous first author.

Mental health

Chris McKinstry had a long struggle with his mental health, with him admitting to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.[10] McKinstry, as a result, suffered from frequent suicidal thoughts and a long-standing depression, discussing it in his suicide note. In his teen years, McKinstry had attempted suicide, intentionally overdosing on drugs, another issue McKinstry struggled with.[11] His bipolar disorder is often attributed to the reason for his standoff in 1990.

Death

Chris McKinstry was found dead in his apartment on January 23, 2006, with a plastic bag over his head, connected by a hose from the stove gas line.[12] He was found to have posted a suicide note online. McKinstry wrote, "I am tired of feeling the same feelings and experiencing the same experiences. It is time to move on and see what is next if anything...This Louis Vuitton, Prada, Montblanc commercial universe is not for me. If only I was loved as much a Montblanc pen..."'[13]

There was 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.[14] His death was determined to have been suicide.[15]

In media

McKinstry is the subject of a 2010 documentary called The Man Behind the Curtain which recounts his innovative work and his struggle with mental health issues.[16]

Articles

  • "Minimum Intelligent Signal Test: An Alternative Turing Test", Canadian Artificial Intelligence, No.41.[17]
  • "A Closer Look at Life in the Summer of '76", Mindjack, 2001.
  • "Passage through science", Mindjack, 2001.
  • "Twenty Twenty: Astronomical Vision", Mindjack, 2002.
  • "A Hacker Goes to Iraq", 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, 2003.[18]
  • "Mind as Space". Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer Science & Business Media. 1 December 2008. p. 283. ISBN 978-1-4020-9624-2. https://books.google.com/books?id=AcXFfl1pPcgC&dq=chris+mckinstry&pg=PA283. 
  • McKinstry, Chris; Dale, Rick; Spivey, Michael J. (January 1, 2008). "Action dynamics reveal parallel competition in decision making". Psychological Science 19 (1): 22–24. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02041.x. PMID 18181787. 

References

  1. ↑ Mottram, Bob (January 28, 2006). "Legends in AI: Chris McKinstry". http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/2006/01/legends-in-ai-chris-mckinstry.html. 
  2. ↑ Hendler, James. "In Memoriam: Push Singh (1972-2006)". http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main%3D%2Farticles%2Fart0678.html%3F. 
  3. ↑ "Mindpixel Crashes". May 6, 2006. http://www.alphabetsoup.cl/blog/2006/05/mindpixel-crashes.html. 
  4. ↑ "McKinstry in Toronto - Globe and Mail". http://groups.google.ca/group/wpg.general/msg/2764a9158359f7b8?dmode=source. 
  5. ↑ "McKinstry in Toronto - Toronto Star". http://groups.google.ca/group/wpg.general/msg/42073915fd22e6ea?dmode=source. 
  6. ↑ "Winnipeg crew offers Net soap for cyber fans". The Ottawa Citizen: pp. 24. 1997-01-09. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/85650772/winnipeg-crew-offers-net-soap-for-cyber/. 
  7. ↑ "Canadian soap opera is coming to Internet". The Windsor Star: pp. 61. 1997-01-25. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/85320709/cr6carlee-benolt-actress-in-cr6-did/. 
  8. ↑ KIVES, BARTLEY (2011-01-23). "Jan 2011: A belated eulogy" (in en-CA). Winnipeg Free Press. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/b_kives/a-belated-eulogy-114443089.html. 
  9. ↑ McKinstry, Chris; Dale, Rick; Spivey, Michael J. (January 1, 2008). "Action dynamics reveal parallel competition in decision making". Psychological Science 19 (1): 22–24. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02041.x. PMID 18181787. 
  10. ↑ Kushner, David. "Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2008/01/ff-aimystery/?currentPage=all. Retrieved Jan 18, 2008. 
  11. ↑ "So what does a web suicide note look like?". Wired. 2006. https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/wired/archive/16.02/McKinstry.html. Retrieved June 10, 2018.  Document
  12. ↑ "Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?" (in en-US). Wired. ISSN 1059-1028. https://www.wired.com/2008/01/ff-aimystery/. Retrieved 2021-09-16. 
  13. ↑ "So what does a web suicide note look like?". Wired. 2006. https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/archive/wired/archive/16.02/McKinstry.html. Retrieved June 10, 2018. 
  14. ↑ Manjoo, Farhad (September 15, 2000). "Two Fake Brains Better Than One". Wired. https://www.wired.com/2000/09/two-fake-brains-better-than-one/. Retrieved June 10, 2018. 
  15. ↑ Kushner, David (January 18, 2008). "Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?". Wired. Archived from the original on May 16, 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20080516234028/https://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-02/ff_aimystery. Retrieved September 14, 2021. 
  16. ↑ "Home". http://themanbehindthecurtainfilm.com. 
  17. ↑ McKinstry, Chris. "Minimum Intelligent Signal Test: An Alternative Turing Test". Canadian Artificial Intelligence (41). http://hps.elte.hu/~gk/Loebner/kcm9512.htm. Retrieved June 10, 2018. 
  18. ↑ McKinstry, Chris (Spring 2003). "A Hacker Goes to Iraq". 2600: The Hacker Quarterly 20 (1): 9. http://sysk-net.com/books/2600%20The%20Hacker%20Quarterly%20-%20Vol%2020%20-%20No%201%202003%20%5BPDF%5D.pdf. Retrieved June 10, 2018. 

External links

  • "MindPixel: Is It Real?". October 2009. http://www.oocities.org/gactheripper/MIndPixelPageFront.html. 
  • "Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project". 2000. http://mindpixel.com. 
  • Cringely, Robert X. (August 24, 2000). "Put On Your Thinking Cap: Chris McKinstry Wants to Build a Brain Accelerator". https://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20000824.html. 
  • "CR6 online soap opera". http://www.cr6.com/. 
  • von Ahn, Luis (December 7, 2005). Human Computation (PDF) (Ph.D). Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. p. 67. Retrieved June 10, 2018.



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