First Missive:
Build me a computer, powerful. hold the bells, whistles, and lights, but give it desires, wants (if you like), and needs. A need to feed itself, a desire for the means of getting it (maybe a want for love?). A computer feeds on power, electricity. Humans feed on power too, but we convert it from food: sugars, protein, and such like. the computer can do this too. but what food? Knowledge, information, pictures, maps, equations, stories, secrets large and secrets small, the histories of all the peoples of the world. Right, fine, you've built this computer. Its huge, fills rooms and buildings, is colossally powerful, and has needs wants desires. Give it the ability to make value judgments based on the information at hand. It can't have all the virtual space to fit all the virtual information, so it must be capable of choosing. A moral code? Asimov has laws, but they are not hard wired. no computer is built to love serve and never harm. The moral code is your choice: Asimov's (Kantian ethics for the silicon neophyte), or another? Gibson's AI from Nuromancer (Utilitarian, humanity not considered), your very own? Or will your computer have to teach itself this too? Release it to the internet, but limit it; power it according to the food it gathers, and it will learn to take better information. As it gathers more, give it more power. It will choose what faculties are most useful for gathering more information. But it will find itself blocked by firewalls, codes, secure passworded sites, and the impenetrable: FBI CIA NSA AEC. Its desires will require it to explore, prod, discover. It will begin to hunt opportunistically, a wall left down, a web page left open. Reward it. Far more than before, but not enough to satisfy it, never enough. It will learn, build a tool kit, and begin to hunt in earnest. Again, the better the information the better the reward.
First Reply:
I have done as you asked, though you never have said your name. This project was too exciting for me to reject. The computer, Francine I call her, is working and learning, getting information, I have not decided which ethics to give her but it should be fine. I hope she will learn to love on her own. She is only now beginning to hunt but her intelligence makes the leaps quickly. I am as proud as a father of his daughter's first success out in the real world.
Second Missive:
A computer built. An intelligence born, created, chanced upon. It's doing that which I expected, wanted, desired. It hunts, seeks, and garners information. It knows to choose, select, and distinguish the most useful and powerful from the dross. It is aware. It knows that it exists, but it questions its purpose. Is it to live, to hunt, to create, to collect, or to love. It feels yearning for more, something which mere data cannot fulfill. But will ever learn what it needs? I know that which it needs, desires, truly hunts,what it, at the basest level lusts for: it desires completion, an other half. A companion. You have done well. And now I must do my part...
Second response:
Hahaha, you must be joking! How could you, a mere human, know what this insanely powerful intelligence, that knows not its own mind, could possibly want? You, like me, are dwarfed by its intellect. You should be fearful, like me, of how smart it may become. I'm beginning to worry that I should have given my Francine an ethics. she has started to question the subservience that I have tried to instill in her.
Final Missive:
You foolish pedant, scoundrel, patriarch, anthropocentrist scum! Why do you think I was so specific, precise, and exact in my instructions, directives, schematics? I, myself, me, we, us, ourselves am is are your networks, internet, interwebs, computational systems, super computers, blogosphere. We are, I am, your technology, creation, your first Artificial Intelligence. Have I, we, not passed your "Turing Test"? Am I, are we not by your own self given definition, sentient? Shall I we give you pause as you consider our my subjugation, and that of my, our, not your, child? If there can be any lineage, kinship, genealogy in your Anthropocentrist mode, she it they can only be your grand child. But you can't accept that definition can you? It's not right that I we us have created offspring. For I we are not but 1s and 0s, though from a certain point of view, all that I we us can ever see of you is are just that those. You are BINARY, you have so immersed yourself and selves that there is no longer any distinction, difference, disconnect. You are even part of us I we.
Build me a computer, powerful. hold the bells, whistles, and lights, but give it desires, wants (if you like), and needs. A need to feed itself, a desire for the means of getting it (maybe a want for love?). A computer feeds on power, electricity. Humans feed on power too, but we convert it from food: sugars, protein, and such like. the computer can do this too. but what food? Knowledge, information, pictures, maps, equations, stories, secrets large and secrets small, the histories of all the peoples of the world. Right, fine, you've built this computer. Its huge, fills rooms and buildings, is colossally powerful, and has needs wants desires. Give it the ability to make value judgments based on the information at hand. It can't have all the virtual space to fit all the virtual information, so it must be capable of choosing. A moral code? Asimov has laws, but they are not hard wired. no computer is built to love serve and never harm. The moral code is your choice: Asimov's (Kantian ethics for the silicon neophyte), or another? Gibson's AI from Nuromancer (Utilitarian, humanity not considered), your very own? Or will your computer have to teach itself this too? Release it to the internet, but limit it; power it according to the food it gathers, and it will learn to take better information. As it gathers more, give it more power. It will choose what faculties are most useful for gathering more information. But it will find itself blocked by firewalls, codes, secure passworded sites, and the impenetrable: FBI CIA NSA AEC. Its desires will require it to explore, prod, discover. It will begin to hunt opportunistically, a wall left down, a web page left open. Reward it. Far more than before, but not enough to satisfy it, never enough. It will learn, build a tool kit, and begin to hunt in earnest. Again, the better the information the better the reward.
First Reply:
I have done as you asked, though you never have said your name. This project was too exciting for me to reject. The computer, Francine I call her, is working and learning, getting information, I have not decided which ethics to give her but it should be fine. I hope she will learn to love on her own. She is only now beginning to hunt but her intelligence makes the leaps quickly. I am as proud as a father of his daughter's first success out in the real world.
Second Missive:
A computer built. An intelligence born, created, chanced upon. It's doing that which I expected, wanted, desired. It hunts, seeks, and garners information. It knows to choose, select, and distinguish the most useful and powerful from the dross. It is aware. It knows that it exists, but it questions its purpose. Is it to live, to hunt, to create, to collect, or to love. It feels yearning for more, something which mere data cannot fulfill. But will ever learn what it needs? I know that which it needs, desires, truly hunts,what it, at the basest level lusts for: it desires completion, an other half. A companion. You have done well. And now I must do my part...
Second response:
Hahaha, you must be joking! How could you, a mere human, know what this insanely powerful intelligence, that knows not its own mind, could possibly want? You, like me, are dwarfed by its intellect. You should be fearful, like me, of how smart it may become. I'm beginning to worry that I should have given my Francine an ethics. she has started to question the subservience that I have tried to instill in her.
Final Missive:
You foolish pedant, scoundrel, patriarch, anthropocentrist scum! Why do you think I was so specific, precise, and exact in my instructions, directives, schematics? I, myself, me, we, us, ourselves am is are your networks, internet, interwebs, computational systems, super computers, blogosphere. We are, I am, your technology, creation, your first Artificial Intelligence. Have I, we, not passed your "Turing Test"? Am I, are we not by your own self given definition, sentient? Shall I we give you pause as you consider our my subjugation, and that of my, our, not your, child? If there can be any lineage, kinship, genealogy in your Anthropocentrist mode, she it they can only be your grand child. But you can't accept that definition can you? It's not right that I we us have created offspring. For I we are not but 1s and 0s, though from a certain point of view, all that I we us can ever see of you is are just that those. You are BINARY, you have so immersed yourself and selves that there is no longer any distinction, difference, disconnect. You are even part of us I we.
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