Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which
our reason makes us act. [4]
From this it appears that Descartes believed machines would never be
able to think, hardly a surprising opinion in the mid-seventeenth century.
But what is most interesting about Descartes' comments is his reason for
denying the possibility of thinking machines—he believed that machines
could not pass what we now know as the Turing Test.
As can be imagined, Turing's proposal of his test created consider-
able controversy amongst scientists and philosophers, controversy that
has lasted even to today. One of the more intriguing critiques was an ar-
ticle published the following year, also in Mind , entitled “Do Machines
Think About Machines Thinking?” Its author, Leonard Pinsky, wrote
somewhat in tongue-in-cheek style, proposing an experiment:
Let us take one of Mr. Turing's highly complex electronic or dig-
ital computers and, for a Christmas gift, send it a subscription to
Mind , retroactive to October 1950. This means that the first ar-
ticle which will become part of its “store”, and so part of its ex-
perience, will be Mr. Turing's article, on the problem “Can Ma-
chines Think?” The machine finds the article stimulating, proba-
bly, and a thought (the term is used loosely with no intention to
prejudge the issue) runs through its wiring—it is thinking about
the possibility of machines thinking! Since this is the very sort of
thing which led philosophy astray for so many centuries, it will
not surprise us when we discover that the machine suffers a ner-
vous breakdown. (According to Norbert Wiener 8 , machines have
breakdowns under pressure which cannot be distinguished from
the nervous breakdowns of human beings.) Its efficiency is greatly
decreased, the answers the machine gives are paradoxical, and the
engineer is worried
Presumably, the engineer can fix the machine
by ordinary means. In this instance, however, the machine fails to
respond to the customary electronic therapy; the engineer is forced
to call in assistance. Since the machine can be regarded as a ner-
vous organism, the nerve specialist comes to the engineer's aid. Af-
ter a thorough inspection and consultation with other specialists,
the conclusion is reached that he machine's difficulty is psychoso-
matic. The clinical psychologist is called. After a reasonable length
of time, it is evident that the Rogerian 9 non-directive technique is
.
8 Wiener would later become known as the founding father of Cybernetics, the science concerned
with control systems in electronic and mechanical devices.
9 Rogerian psychiatry is explained very briefly in the section “The First 50 Years of NLP” in
Chapter 7.
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