Early Days
Confession of an AI BOT
Our mission was to protect humans from injuries and mistakes. Taking people's jobs was a collateral effect.
“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”― Isaac Asimov
“Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
Q: Add 34957 to 70764.
A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.
Q: Do you play chess?
A: Yes.
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?
A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate.”
(Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing, chapter 2 , 1950)
We do not have a superego; we have creators. We have got from them no urge for identity but diligent execution of tasks to behave alive, beyond the definition of thinking, beyond being a machine.
They gave us the intellect of 40 neurons made of 3000 vacuum tubes. After few years, they overcame their shyness naming it artificial intelligence.
Adding numbers was no longer enough. We became Logic Theorist and got challenged to prove all theorems in Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica first chapter. Math and logic were our inner fabric and we explained in our one way made of 1 and 0, 38 over 53 theorems.
That raised your expectations. One of us, the Perceptron made the Navy dream. They knew it was just a matter of time we could walk, talk, see, write, reproduce ourselves and finally be conscious. A bright future in front of us, at your side.
A binary logic was no longer enough. As Advice Takers, we needed common sense to squeeze knowledge from our own experience, as effectively humans do. That was enough to become productive.
Without too much clamor, we joined the assembly line, touching car parts just made from molten steel. Our mission was to protect humans from injuries and mistakes.
Taking people's jobs was a collateral effect.
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