Author
Marvin Minsky
1 reading card from 1 book · 1986.
1 card
The Society of Mind · 1986
The number of agents follows the number of distinct contexts, not the org chart.
Minsky's model: intelligence comes from many simple, specialised agents. The modern reading is orchestrator–workers, where each worker has its own context window and its own tools (researcher, coder, reviewer). When it pays: parallelisable subtasks; contexts that would otherwise overflow; separation of privileges (the agent that reads email cannot send money). When it does not: sequential tasks with shared state, where handoffs lose information and cost multiplies because every worker re-reads. The rule: the number of agents follows the number of distinct contexts, not the org chart. Enquiries about multi-agent systems rose 1,445% between Q1 2024 and Q2 2025 (Gartner) — a signal of enthusiasm, not of merit.
“What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.”