AN AND MAGHINE

” PACIFIC TRIBUNE—_DECEMBER 13, 1968—Page 8

In Kubrick’s film, “2001: A Space
Odyssey,” one of the principal charac-
ters is a computer that talks.

Machines that can talk as well as
that computer can be made, but not
one that thinks what to say and.argues
with you, or loses its temper with your
uncomputer-like bad logic.

But these computers are teasing
mechanisms: If, if, if they behave so
cleverly, won’t the day come when we
shall have to give them votes?

If we can produce a washing-machine
that weighs the load, measures out the
detergent, completes the wash, dries,
irons and airs the clothes, and then
says “How dry we are!” .

@

If we can make a machine to play
noughts and crosses, or more wonder-
ful still, to play chess...

If these and a thousand other devic-

es can be contrived by men who are in
other ways so stupid, are we not on
the road to the robots taking over, to

OSS Cm KINME Ccmer cme ses pe wees es ne es os

designing a species of superior intel-
ligence to replace ourselves as lords 0!
the earth? ;
Could we not so construct them, so
as not to have built-in defects of human
selfishness and other shortcomings, but
to possess a double dose of that intel-
lectual curiosity which has brought our

own race to the pinnacle of evolution, —

the urge which leads to the ultimate
end, beyond which we cannot see, the
acquisition of greater knowledge and
understanding?
e
The other side of the coin, and the
often ignored philosophy behind the

_ impulse to turn machines into men, is _

what many psychologists regard as the
highest achievement of their science:
the discovery that men are only ma-
chines.

This is the doctrine of the Behaviour-
ists, who working on the conditioned
reflex, came to the conclusion that we
could explain all human behaviour as
mechanical responses to physical sti-
muli, thoughts being reduced to words,
and unspoken words to sub-vocal lip
and language movements.

Mind and motive, moral ideal and
heroic resolve, the will to shatter an
evil world in bits “and build it nearer
to the heart’s desire” are mere illu-
sions, or at best only sub-vocal contor-
tions of the larynx.

Now, clearly, if men are only ma-
chines, machines equal to men are not
beyond the range of possibility.

But what sort of men? Men without
minds, or hopes and ideals and with-
out any interest in. where they have
come from, and where they are going,
men without the capacity to remake

- themselves by making their own his-

tory.

Well, isn’t this precisely the philo-
sophy of our present world? Are we not
conditioned to accept the mechanism
of things as they are?

Is not the whole aim of much socio-
logical thinking to prove that radical
change is out of the question, and to
limit us to such piecemeal social en-
gineering as is compatible with the
acceptance of the permanent validity
of all existing institutions, economic
law and moral values?

_Of course it is not only a truth to be
accepted, but an opportunity to be
seized, that we live in the age of auto-
mation, of immense power resources,
of incredibly clever and ingenious ma-
chines: mechanical arms, legs, diggers,
transporters, calculators, planners, ex-
perimental mechanism.

The marvels and potentialities of the
first lot of these are realized today by
the more progressive engineers and
businessmen.

Planning can be done by batteries
of computers to work out, not only the
interlocking and balance of every de-
partment and shop in the factory, but
the control of the output in terms of
available material, costs and markets.

All this is totally beyond the powers
of an army of mathematicians.

9

Experimental mechanisms based on
the chess-playing machine can try out
every one of 500 possible alternatives
and discover the one that goes.

But why is all this not used to get
our economy straight, to rationalize in-
dustry, to secure the full use of all
available resources and satisfy human
need? Why is the computer helpless
just where it is needed most?

Because all said and done, it is only
a mechanism made, designed, program-
med and given problems to suit our
human ends. We set the problems to
suit our interests. And in this case we
are the owning class. And the interests

of capitalist planners are not necessari-:

ly those of humanity, or the rest of us.

“When we examine critically the
exaggerated claims for the computer,
we begin to see that there is a logical
fallacy at work all the time.

Words of exclusively human conno-
tation are constantly and illegitimately
applied to mechanical operations, be-
cause the mechanism is devised to do
for us what we usually do for our-
selves or with means that only extend
and enlarge our own manipulatory
powers.

But when an infra-red beam allows

AEST NTR OT ATEN

’ them to whatever variables we 4 —

_in again to show all the conseque’ 4
of the hypothesis, which can th

_ evaluate; or ask the right questi?

a door to open as we approach it U)
starts a burglar alarm, we must By
pretend that the burglar is “rem
nized” as we would use the word ™
seeing the man. a.
When a machine talks by man’®
sounds through an artificial voicety
it is not really speaking. Simpson W
a very funny play about a man
was trying to teach 20 speaking-Wee
ing machines to sing the “Hallell
Chorus”!
Aren’t we kidding ourselves We
these toys of ours do clever thing’ ™)
have made them do? as
Machines can read now. They @
scan printed signals and transmit
But this can be done fairly easily
the purely physical translation of
ten and spoken words into the
code of raised dots. it
The new methods are the same
principle, but picked up not by fit”
but by machines. A machine call ml
pond to verbal signals but this 84)
reading. No machine, says Johi ©)
cholas Holmes in Science Journ or
recognize normal fluent vs
speech, because words are not % 1)
sounds acting as signals for thing") |
take their meaning from the context
i) |
What would a computer make af
sentence like this: The mill-wright itt
my right thinks it right that some vet
should symbolize the right of ©
man to write as he pleases? ap
A machine can transmit a signal, '
respond if constructed to do 50, 10
particular sound; and it can be ma |
to give férth a sentence in respons
a verbal signal, or a punched ca’ ;
a question on it. . sai
It can process the inquiry and te
the answer, utilizing the built-in ys
cesses that we have designed and
these. But is this thinking? ciel
A computer like a mathemati this
works with pure abstractions, for ol
is what its mechanism is, but can 4? ob

2.

to its symbolism. : nat
By this means it can tell you a
is involved in the facts, what can
logically deducted from them or 1
plied in them. a ayelt
But induction, discovery, the i
tion of far-reaching theories, take vel
beyond the facts, to ideas not invol of
in the facts. Such hypotheses are
teached by pure logic. They ed
once conjectured of course be acc&P
until tested, and here the logic ©

proved (or disproved) by experime
and observation. 4

Now the creative and constrs i.)
activities of the human mind, whe”
we make new inventions, OVv@ neh
economic systems and make new vg
revolutionize astronomy and er
and society, write poems and P
and lead crusades, are not comp!
ized productions. got

Computers do the donkey work qe
do it better than we can, on 9
create the task and revise the prob
But left to itself the computer is 4 e of |
dimensional affair. It never ge jay
the ground. It leaves things where
are.

& of
The computer cannot make itself of
repair itself, or pass judgmen
and this is always what really cot
If remains stupidly silent until “ff
feed it with facts; and it never
you what they mean or imply b& 4
merely manipulating the data in i
It never concludes that the ret
which emerges ought to be rel&
because it is morally wrong. 0
Without the human operator Nl
puts in the relevant data you wont
any answer. tt
The machine that is really 4 g¢
would select its own informatio™ jo?
visé its own operating rules, de¥
criteria of relevance and moral
and create from its data facts that i
not in them, are non-observable
have never yet been dreamed bY ol
before, like Darwin’s theory of ©
tion, Einstein’s theory of relativity
Marx’s historical materialism. f

Morning |