Computer and the Mind of Man : Engine at the Door (1962)

will machines ever run man this is a question that is equivalent to uh to wondering whether we can ever make machines that will break the thought barrier I don't really know but I do know that if we uh if we are able to make a machine which is capable of emulating human thinking is capable of self- reproduction it's capable of improving itself well I I hope that the man who does this has the presence of mind to kick the plug out of the socket before he runs this is Jay preser eert co-inventor of eniac and vice president of univac division sper ran Corporation [Music] as far as we know uh ever since the human race came into existence men always had some kind of knowledge about the world and themselves which enable them to survive in what are often difficult if not hostile environments and for many centuries many thousands of years men acquired uh a certain Kno hows such obvious things for example as being able to walk uh the use of a fire the use of a wheel in order to drag heavy objects the use of a pulley these things where the origin is lost in beginnings of historic time uh enabled men to achieve a great by way of establishing a some kind of a civilization this is Ernest Nagel professor of philosophy at Columbia University and a prominent figure in the effort to reestablish the unity of Science and philosophy for the most part these habits well as long as men remained in a certain kind of environment or the environment didn't change but that as soon as some fresh problem arose the traditional habits no longer served to enable men to achieve even a moderate kind of existence yesterday's fantasies of other worlds and machines like men are today's reality the trouble with science fiction is that it's all too real if you suggest to a child today that uh uh we are going to be able to go to the moon and back or that we're going to be able to uh write music with machines uh be able to paint pictures with machines we'll be able to uh transfer our bodies through space and recreate them at another Point U they're not stunned the they they uh they used this type of Science Fiction as clearly derivable out of the world in which they live this is Dr CR De Carlo Director of Education for the International Business Machines Corporation the essence of of this of this environment is that the key is is the information in the system rather than the energy because of this our kids are willing to accept almost anything is possible of course this gives a this gives us a problem in that uh we become at once very uh Blas about the most exciting events on the one hand on the other we we develop a ready expectation of of the good life uh with no effort it's as though you simply put the crank in spend enough dollars and if you want a trip to the moon your ticket should be ready uh in a matter of hours Roger understand go for at least seven orbits but the key is the information in the system rather than the Energy Information which implies the power of understanding the parts and forces that operate within a system so that we may predict possible outcomes control the system and perhaps design a better one there are many situations in the Contemporary world where the sheer amount of information and the speed at which it must be handled simply exceed the tolerances and capacities of the human nervous system yet it may be that our very survival depends upon our ability to accumulate and to use wisely information concerning ourselves and our rapidly changing environment through its ability to process information and to serve as an extension of our logical and decision making Powers the computer has become the indispensable tool of the Modern Age the things we can't do on a computer are the things that we we do subconsciously there's even another other case they the things we can't do at all either but uh we do many things subconsciously in some an explainable way and in fact to us it seems almost muddled way underneath it all and then we we come out uh with the the results of this thinking and it takes us a while to understand what we've come out with uh once we do bring these things out on the table and understand them then we have no trouble explaining them to other people we also have no trouble putting them on computers then I think you can make the assertion that any phenomenon involving data and logic or purpose can be at least helped implemented or Amplified through the use of Information Technology and this is why I think we we've come to accept the notion today that practically Anything is Possible possible a statement to the effect that anything is possible immediately raises the social and ethical question as to what within the infinite range of possibility is desirable and for whom obviously any product of Science and any tool be it a stone Hammer a steam engine an atomic reactor or a computer can be used and misused yet there are those who claim that there is something inherently destructive in the works of modern science and that Science and Technology are responsible for the most critical problems faced by the modern world this responsibility I suppose cannot be denied on the other hand uh many of the criticisms of science as being the source of our contemporary Evils are on par with respect to their relevance uh and with respect to their Force to saying that it is marriage which is the cause of divorce since if we weren't married uh we wouldn't have the problem of divorce as I see it we are uh we're embedded in a in a in a new world and a new world of technology at least at least in this country and probably in Western Europe although I'm no expert in in in this field but it does seem to me that we are embedded in a in a world where technology is completely pervasive and and some people seem to think we're almost subordinate to technology certainly science has made it possible for us to develop instrumentalities of various kinds we have alas misuse many of them or use them for what would be generally acknowledged to be iniquitous purposes but to blame science for this is not to distribute the blame correctly uh without science many of our contemporary Horrors certainly would not have come into be but it isn't science alone which uh must shoulder the responsibility for this but rather all of us who do not know how to use uh the inventiveness of man for satisfactory purposes uh we realize now that a person to participate in this technological world has to be educated and trained to a certain minimum point in order to survive as a healthy functioning individual uh these are changes which are are are quite pervasive and and in a sense radical that have taken place it may suggest uh concominant changes or social inventiveness is going to be required in other uh in other activities in which we're engaged and I believe that they all have their their basis in the uh development of this information technology because it's here that we been able to uh bring our past experience to Bear to do a better job in designing and a better job in the production of things the great problem before us as I see it is how to uh to establish the ends now that we have the scientific means to create such a a wondrous world in the world of things I think it's uh much more important to think of science not simply as an instrument for developing these obvious material Goods but to think of science as I think has always been part of the tradition within the scientific Community as an agency which succeeds in emancipating the human mind from ignorance error and from superstition I'll grant that at the same time the means the technology if you will the mass communication Mass uh media the the advertising the television uh the closeness uh the togetherness of living in an urban society makes it difficult for the individual to remain an individual and make this assessment our problem in education is to increase the probability that he will exercise Choice he will exercise thought but observe he's at least in a position to do it to me this is the the one great benefit that has come out of the science as a means to a better physical life it puts the individual in a position to assess who he is where he wants to go how he wants to contribute he may be very passive but he at least has the chance it is the replacement of men by machines automation that is frequently singled out as the most immediate problem brought on by technological will change I do not think it's it's a it's a situation which which uh solves itself automatically for example I think there's a danger that all progress whether whether we make people live longer through medicine and and as a result have more people to support from the working group or whether we use more Automation in computers all progress is going to create an unemployment problem I think the computer is one of the best tools we have to do some planning and try to get out of this unemployment problem I don't think it's a situation which solves itself automatically in the farms in the last 35 or 40 years in United States we have gone down to 40% of the number of farmers and now turn out two and a half times as much food in other words we turn out five times as much food per man on a farm now as we did 35 or 40 years ago this has created unemployment problems on the farm and we've solved this problem on the farm by giving subsidies but if we make improvements like we have in automation on the farm in all areas of our work where are the subsidies going to come from to substitute to subsidize everything you can't subsidize everything from everything else and therefore I think we have have to solve these problems in the future and not just pretend that they're that they're selfe equalizing or self-solving they don't seem to be I think we have before us several uh important uh decisions to make number number one is with the increasing amount of productivity uh in our physical plant how shall we operate to guarantee the greatest number of things and services at people uh should we try to work fewer hours and have more people work uh should we try to find uh new products new markets and new services to take up the increased in productivity uh should we uh develop more concern for uh new new human activities such as an enormously increased uh attention to education to culture that is the things of a culture music art uh these types of decisions of the allocation of our energy and our resources I think underly the current attention that's that's being paid to the problem of Automation and technological change uh unemployment the the uses of Leisure Time but observe that under underlying all of these problems is is the concept of great gain in productivity through technology and the uses of those gains in attaining Social purpose now I think that the it's inevitable that as we become bigger as our people live closer together that we're going to have the necessity for a more planful consideration of the introduction into change this is the kind of problem that I think has to be brought out into the open in the public sector discussed uh with the consensus of the people uh coming up through political leadership with all of us accommodating ourselves and our various views to the greatest good and I see as a result of this process a a great deal more of thoughtful and planned action on the part of society not only the great corporations the labor unions uh the government but on all of our institutions we have to become more concerned about our desire to predict and control control and amplify and make better the future in which we're going to live of course a great deal of the future will depend upon what commands we give our machines and what questions we ask themom sweep check and what about computers that adapt to their environment and in a sense learn from experience prep Dr Richard Hamming of the Bell Telephone Laboratories questions Larry Roberts of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about a machine learning experiment how are you people approaching this learning problem well we're worried about the problem of pattern classification now if you wanted to separate the letters of the alphabet one from another with a machine you'd have to develop all sorts of rules to separate them o is completely closed B has two closed areas now you can State this one rule is one and you can State many more rules which are TR to separate them all uh we're worried about speech recognition here uh I'm sure you'd find it very hard to separate to write down all the rules to separate various speech patterns and so we have to have the machine do some of this work for us we try and give it a method for generating its own rules and uh by this method we are able to classify patterns by giving it instances of each pattern we give it say five A's and 5 B's and five C's and it teach it which is which and then it should be able to develop rules for classifying A's the same and separating them from B's as I see this is rather sophisticated proposal you are not giving the machine the rules you're giving the machine the method and the Machine will find the rules for making distinction that's right uh the rules themselves may be just represented in terms of numbers in the machine but the machine has to interpret them and change them as you get new input so here we have a program which improves with age that is the more it sees the better it does and it developed better rules for separating the patterns wouldn't this be rather timec consuming on a machine to carry out such a program well we see how long it takes humans it takes about 10 or 20 years before they've learned too much by teaching so we hope to install Enough by our knowledge directly so they can learn and improve faster than normal teaching but we expect it to take 10 or 20 years like the human does to really get fairly far along another research effort in machine learning is the famous Checker playing experiment being conducted by Professor Al Samuel of IBM I'm interested in the problem of machine learning this is an attempt to write a program which causes a computer to improve its performance as a result of its experience uh since it is quite difficult to do this in a real life situation I have chosen the game of checkers this is a program which causes the computer to play Checkers and to impr profit from its playing experience so that with time it plays a better and better game of checkers now I can demonstrate this I just made the move one to five I enter this move instruct the computer as to this move by entering two keys and pushing a start button which causes the computer to accept the move and print it on the printer it then is Computing and these lights are flickering it is Computing its best move on the basis of its information when it has completed this move this light comes on showing it it's stopped and the move will be displayed on these numbers which duplicate the numbers appearing on the board it has moved its move was 2925 I enter its move 2925 obviously we hope that in Long Range future we can use these same principles in real life situations at the moment this is a pure research problem however it is not unreasonable to think that in many situations we will be able to apply these fre problems in a speech presented during a session on the computer of the future held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Norbert weiner Institute Professor ameritus made this comment about learning machines don't suppose for a moment at least I don't I'm not naive enough to suppose that the International Business Machines Corporation made this machine to play Checkers it made this machine as a working model of decisionmaking machines the fact that that machine can defeat the man that programmed it even if you can catch up with it later means that the fact that you've made such a machine does not give you completely effective control over it if you had that you would not have let it beat you now this is very important such a machine in certain decision situations can be very useful such machines could conceivably be used to play other games than Checkers the business game the raw game the game of determining when to press the button for Armageddon for the thermonuclear war the situation of man and the computer has been described as Man's first encounter outside himself with something that is exactly like some inside part of himself and what does this mean with respect to man's view of himself Dr Richard Hamming commented the it's the intellectual aspect of the computer Revolution Which is far more important in the long run than material aspects it is going to change our view of the world our view of ourselves I think this is far more important than the fact that machines will also change the way we live and the change may go even deeper into an understanding of the life process itself in the past two decades we've seen some brilliant work in interpreting the nature of the cell as a an information machine uh geneticists microbiologists are beginning to use the same ideas constructs and words that we use in the computer field and this isn't to suggest that the computer can either unravel the life secret or can duplicate it or can control it it does suggest however that an understanding of the life process can profit by taking operational ideas from information Theory and information technology and applying them uh to to the life process I personally am persuaded that no matter how deeply uh we probe no matter how arduously we try to duplicate and are successful in duplicating certain parts of the life process that there will always be uh some new level of finess or resolution uh Beyond Us in other words the Enigma will always uh be there the Enigma of life itself exceeds only the Enigma of how to live a life meaningfully into the fullest the Enigma of how to adapt to and how to shape the circumstances of life we have inherited and of life we have created have we the wisdom for survival there is one of our Creations the computer which has no wisdom whatsoever of its own but has great ability to follow what we instructed to follow this machine May free us a little from routines that we may develop wisdom it may show us abstractly the logical consequences of actions which may help us to act more wisely it may help us to use the past with greater wisdom in the service of the present and it may help us to teach the young that they may grow Beyond Us in wisdom I view technology as at once a a crushing weight on the individual but on the other hand an enormous opportunity to understand himself and to reflect uh and assess where he wants to go at the same time realize that he has to uh fight the battle within himself to remain a biological mechanism uh I guess the the individual uh today is is faced a little bit with the uh the fear of admitting or facing his own existence uh because it is a it's a lonely world in one sense the the the existence of technology and and things an environment which seems to be so impersonal uh to use the the favorite word alienates the individual it is a lonely uphill battle to be alert and perceptive to the world and yet I think it's the most Noble Battle as it always has been in in the in history the all the way back to the to the Greeks the phrase the unexamined life isn't worth living well this was a phrase that was made in in uh in Athens when there were very few people that could even afford examination so for most of people in Athens life life by definition wasn't worth living today at least the opportunity to examine life is is available to practically all of our citizens uh I think uh the the the expression I like to to uh conjure with here I remember is from Ortega I think he said that uh that life is is is is petty and unless it's moved by an indomitable urge uh to extend its its bound iies that only when when we live more when we desire to live more are we really living at all and it's this outer tension the the the outer desire the desire to participate and at the same time to be intros introspective to me seems to be the heart of the educational problem in our culture as I say it's it's a a problem that's made enormously Difficult by technology mass communications and all of the the things that we look at negatively and yet it's these negative means which enable us to have the opportunity for individual assessment whether we have the the courage and the time and the energy to use the opportunity we have I think is the is the great problem [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] our thanks also to NASA and the MIT press for the statement by Norbert weiner which appears in the book management and the computer of the future this is NE National educational television