Essay: The Mind in the Machine

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The answer to the first question, then—Can a machine think?—is yes and no. A computer can certainly do some of the above. It can (or will soon be able to) transmit and receive messages, "read" typescript, recognize voices, shapes and patterns, retain facts, send reminders, "talk" or mimic speech, adjust, correct, strategize, make decisions, translate languages. And; of course, it can calculate, that being its specialty. Yet there are hundreds of kinds of thinking that computers cannot come close to. And for those merely intent on regarding the relationship of man to machine as a head-to-artificial-head competition, this fact offers some solace—if not much progress.

For example, the Apollo moon shot in July 1969 relied on computers at practically every stage of the operation. Before taking off, the astronauts used computerized simulations of the flight. The spacecraft was guided by a computer, which stored information about the gravitational fields of the sun and moon, and calculated the craft's position, speed and altitude. This computer, which determined the engines to be fired, and when, and for how long, took part of its own information from another computer on the ground. As the Apollo neared the moon, a computer triggered the firing of a descent rocket, slowed the lunar module, and then signaled Neil Armstrong that he had five seconds to decide whether or not to go ahead with the landing. At 7,200 ft., a computer commanded the jets to tilt the craft almost upright so that Armstrong and Aldrin could take a close look at what the world had been seeking for centuries.

Would one say, then, that computers got men to the moon? Of course not. A machine is merely a means. What got man to the moon was his desire to go there—desire being yet another of those elements that a computer cannot simulate or experience. It was far less interesting, for instance, that Archimedes believed he could move the earth with his lever than that he wanted to try it. Similarly, no machine could have propelled man to the moon had not the moon been in man in the first place.

Thus the second question—Should a machine think?—answers itself. The question is not in fact the moral problem it at first appears, but purely a practical one. Yes, a machine should think as much as it can, because it can only think in limited terms. Hubert Dreyfus, a philosophy professor at Berkeley, observes that "all aspects of human thought, including nonformal aspects like moods, sensory-motor skills and long-range self-interpretations, are so interrelated that one cannot substitute an abstractable web of explicit beliefs for the whole cloth of our concrete everyday practice." Marianne Moore saw the web her own way: "The mind is an enchanting thing,/ is an enchanted thing/ like the glaze on a/ katydid-wing/ subdivided by sun/ till the nettings are legion,/ Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti." In short, human intelligence is too intricate to be replicated. When a computer can smile at an enemy, cheat at cards and pray in church all in the same day, then, perhaps, man will know his like. Until then, no machine can touch us.