Strictly

personal

yy Bob Hunter

Japan Airlines Magazine, about the famous

| Es READING AN ARTICLE in Winds, the

. “Fifth Generation’’ computer the Japanese are building. Several interesting. points emerged:

First, the best way to

describe the thing they are’

trying to create is to call it ‘‘a knowledge-processing machine,”’ which is quite dif- ferent from a mere word- processing. machine, such as I’m writing with now. ’ And let’s pause for a se- cond right tiere. A doubt. arose, as I was

writing this, about whether to -

say ‘‘writing with’? or “writing on.”’ The fact that I chose “‘with’ says a lot about our changing relationship with technoiogy. In the old days, when I had a typewriter, I always wrote “on” it, never ‘‘with’’ it. Bruno Freschi, the ar- chitect, and I had-a discus- sion about this new feeling about machines recently. He says that high tech is really

touch, Machines like com-.

puters “‘take you over into a sensuous side.””

Look at the language: “user friendly!’’ Next thing you know, it'll be ‘‘user-sen-

sitive,’ ‘‘user-affectionate,”? |

“user-passionate.’’ We'll have the psycho-electronic equivalent of Huggies.

A premonition haunts me that we are about to see a replay of the old Chinese pro-

verb about booze: ‘‘First the’

man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the

Traditionally Handcrafted Furniture in Solid Oak and Pine.

drink takes the man.”’

The man makes a com- puter, the computer makes a computer, the computer makes a man? Something like that.

I know, I know. This must be left-over cyborphobia. Still, E fret.

Kazuhiro Fuchi, the boss ‘of the Institute for New Generation Computer Technology, was interviewed in Tokyo. He explained that the new species of computer, when completed in 1992, will be much more than the fancy adding machines and copiers and alphabet-mixers we use today.

By natural, he means you will be able to talk to it, just like the reactivated HAL 9000 computer in the movie 2010, The Year We Make Contact... Or, let us say, like you talk to your dog. And this is only seven years away!

In its most lowly caoactiy, the Fifth Generation thing will be able to prepare your tax return in its entirety. {2°

be able to listen to your spoken dictation and print it ©

out in finished script, translate languages, give diagnostic opinions in com- plex medical cases and design buildings automatically.

The device will combine

‘natural’? _

the fastest circuitry available by then, but more to the point it will have ‘‘func-

tions’? that allow it to refer to ©

rules and meanings stored in its memory as it processes data.

It wouldn't just be doing calculations, it will be mak- ing inferences and drawing conclusions as it goes along. Thus, it deserves to be refered to as ‘Artificial Intelligence."’

What Mr. Fuchi doesn’t say — and this is what I'd like to ask him — is what happens when the Artificial Intelligence begins to acquire its own memories and starts to draw inferences based on its real experiences in the world, as opposed to the abstract hogwash it will be fed initially?

Ata certain level, aren’t we all *‘artificial intelligences?”

Also, when you think about it, we attribute our “immortal souls’* to higher mental functions, don’t we? The reason animals don’t have ‘souls seems to’ be

because they can’t do algebra - or they can't envision Gad. The frontal! lobes in their.

brains aren’t thickly-enough packed.

That’s an easy point to make to your dog. He doesn’t know what the hell you're talking about. But your computer, less than a decade from now, probably will. What a debate itll be?

I wonder how fong it will tbe — and I am REALLY not joking! — before somebody “S\oerates’’ a computer from its yrison in some govern- meni building? The argu- ment, of course, will be that flumans have no right to force intelligent computers to do our bidding just because we invented them.

; It’s coming. Believe me, it’s coming.

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