It may be 100 years before history can assess the role that this one human being called Marvin Minsky played in transforming our world. The impact of artificial intelligence -- so pervasive, so woven into the fabric of all that we do and think -- would not be as it is had Marvin not been among us.

The victory of ignorance over memory is the strongest evidence of the failure of peaceful coexistence between the past and the present. But as long as we are not speechless and indifferent to the destruction of our civilizational past, we have a chance to save humanity from the incalculable evil that human beings are capable of bringing about.

The idea that "the self is an illusion" has become the bien pensant common sense of the day in many educated circles in the West. I think this is profoundly misguided, but I can see why it seems so compelling. In the English language, nouns label things while verbs label the things that they do. If you mistook this linguistic quirk for a deep philosophical truth then you would of course conclude that the self doesn't exist, because there is no single thing that "I" or "you" refers to. That is because on close examination "I" turns out to be a verb disguised as a noun.

PARIS -- Islamophobia is not a new phenomenon, suddenly uncovered by social media on the Internet. Islamophobia is as old as Islam itself. Yet, Islam can be rightly credited as a trendsetter in interfaith harmony. We all need to articulate that for the sake of humanity.