Marvin Minsky was Kurzweil's mentor for 54 years until Minsky's death about a year before March 2017.

True: Minsky's death date falls roughly a year before March 2017 (about 10 to 15 months earlier counts), and documented evidence shows a mentoring relationship with Kurzweil that began around 1962 to 1963, i.e., lasting about 54 years. Mostly true: the death date fits and the mentoring relationship is documented, but its start implies a span off by a few years from 54. Mixed: one of the two elements (the 54-year span or the timing of the death) is clearly wrong. Mostly false: the relationship existed but was far shorter, or it was not a mentorship. False: there is no documented mentoring relationship, or Minsky's death date is wholly inconsistent with the claim.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 Marvin Minsky, “father of artificial intelligence,” dies at 88 MIT News · 25 January 2016

   “Marvin Minsky, a mathematician, computer scientist, and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, died at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Sunday, Jan. 24, of a cerebral hemorrhage.”

2. E2 the Kurzweil Library Tracking breakthroughs in tech, science, and world progress. Kurzweil Library (thekurzweillibrary.com) · 1 January 2016 Own record

   “When I was 14 I wrote Marvin Minsky a letter asking to meet with him. He invited me to visit him at MIT and he spent hours with me as if he had nothing else to do.”

3. E3 Raymond Kurzweil Lemelson-MIT Program

   “In high school, Kurzweil began corresponding with Marvin Minsky, an artificial intelligence guru at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).”

The evidence dates Minsky's death to Jan. 24, 2016, about 14 months before the claim [E1], and shows contact between Kurzweil and Minsky beginning in Kurzweil's high-school years [E2][E3]. No evidence gives a start year or Kurzweil's age, so it cannot show whether the span was about 54 years or off by a few years, which the criteria need to settle the verdict.