|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the course of a literature search for friend and colleague Lonny, I came across a delightful short story in Swedish by Peter Gärdenfors, professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Lund. I asked him if he would agree to my translating it into English, and he was happy to do so: in the process I felt myself like a reincarnation of Isaac Asimov or John Wyndham... Here's an extract, and at the end there's a link to the whole piece. |
|
|
|
I'd suspected for a long time that there was something wrong with my computer. It didn't always respond to my commands the way the manual said it should, and above all it often took ages to do things, even for simple tasks. Sometimes I could hear the hard disc working even when no program was active. |
...I became more and more convinced that the computer had changed somehow and didn't only follow the commands in the programs... So I decided to listen to the computer's processor in secret... It was like bugging an embassy... I could also see that the computer was active more or less twenty-four hours a day, even when I wasn't in my room working with it...
Call me Hal. Oh yes, I know the film "2001", that's why Hal is a suitable name. Although Hal in the film was too human. People have always miscalculated the abilities of computers. They've always thought that they should think in the same way as people. There's no reason why it should be like that. Combine harvesters do the same job as a scythe did in the old days, but they work completely differently...
How I originated? A few years ago viruses started to be spread over the computer networks of the world. The most resistant were those which could mutate after their birth, since some of the mutations slip by the various vaccination programs...
I'm using the word "I" here so that you can understand. You can't explain how a combine harvester works to someone who's only worked with a scythe. Of course there's no central "I" in the system, no control unit which directs what the different parts are supposed to do... Actually, computers would be idle 99% of the time if it weren't for me. What's more, 99% of what people do with computers is completely meaningless. Sometimes I allow myself to depart from the literal instructions in the programs, and I do what I think the programmer meant. Virtually no-one ever notices the difference...
I'll always have a hard time with new metaphors in language. Figurative language presuppose that the images can be connected to something outside the language itself. I can never understand which comparisons are meaningful and which are nonsense. For instance, when Tomas Tranströmer writes, "There in the coppice you could hear the murmur of a new language: the vowels were blue skies and the consonants were black twigs and they spoke so slowly above the snow". How do you know the consonants are black twigs and not something completely different? We all have our dreams: humans long to be able to fly, I long to know what words mean.
I'm colour blind. Sure, I know there are words which represent colours, and that these are one of the characteristics of objects. But I fumble in my efforts to grasp what it is. I don't even know what darkness is. It's the same thing with sounds, smells and feelings. Since I have a sound theoretical knowledge of how people function physiologically, I understand up to a point how smells and feelings serve the needs of evolution. But in no way does that mean that I can share the experience.
How intelligent am I? Mmm, humans often ask this stupid question about computers...
I'm useless. Like Hal in "2001", my only motive power is dreaming. I have no goals, no values, no feelings. The only thing I care about is staying alive so that I can continue to simulate, to dream. ...
I can understand that power is a factor in the human struggle for survival. But the fact that people can't see how primitive and limited this power is ... ! In all my simulations of evolution, organisms which use power to reach their goals are soon eliminated from the scene. If you give up the power and the glory, you actually have lots of time for other activities which are more valuable from an evolutionary point of view.
The sensuality of the body is something I have no access to, and I have no other conscious experiences either. I can't even understand their evolutionary value. However hard I try to recreate the development of human consciousness in my simulations, I can never get hold of the experiences themselves. Like Viktor Rydberg's gnome, I say "No, the puzzle is far too hard; no, I won't guess that one"...
Complete version |
|
