this suggested-that we might soon be able to command a prepro-
grammed mass-produced mail-order twenty-dollar desk-model "music
box" to bring forth from its sterile circuitry pieces which Chopin or
Bach might have written had they lived longer is a grotesque and
shameful misestimation of the depth of the human spirit. A "program"
which could produce music as they did would have to wander around
the world on its own, fighting its way through the maze of life and
feeling every moment of it. It would have to understand the joy and
loneliness of a chilly night wind, the longing for a cherished hand, the
inaccessibility of a distant town, the heartbreak and regeneration after
a human death. It would have to have known resignation and world-
weariness, grief and despair, determination and victory, piety and awe.
In it would have had to commingle such opposites as hope and fear,
anguish and jubilation, serenity and suspense. Part and parcel of it
would have to be a sense of grace, humor, rhythm, a sense of the
unexpected-and of course an exquisite awareness of the magic of
fresh creation. Therein, and therein only, lie the sources of meaning in
music.
Question: Will emotions be explicitly programmed into a machine?
Speculation: No. That is ridiculous. Any direct simulation of
emotions-PARRY, for example-cannot approach the complexity of
human emotions, which arise indirectly from the organization of our
minds. Programs or machines will acquire emotions in the same way:
as by-products of their structure, of the way in which they are
organized-not by direct programming. Thus, for example, nobody
will write a "falling-in-Iove" subroutine, any more than they would
write a "mistake-making" subroutine. "Falling in love" is a description
which we attach to a complex process of a complex system; there need
be no single module inside the system which is solely responsible for it,
however!
Question: Will a thinking computer be able to add fast?
Speculation: Perhaps not. We ourselves are composed of hardware
which does fancy calculations but that doesn't mean that our symbol
level, where "we" are, knows how to carry out the same fancy calcula-
tions. Let me put it this way: there's no way that you can load numbers
into your own neurons to add up your grocery bill. Luckily for you,
your symbol level (i.e., you) can't gain access to the neurons which are
doing your thinking-otherwise you'd get addle-brained. To para-
phrase Descartes again:
"I think; therefore I have no access
to the level where I sum."
Why should it not be the same for an intelligent program? It mustn't
be allowed to gain access to the circuits which are doing its thinking-
otherwise it'll get addle-CPU'd. Quite seriously, a machine that can
pass the Turing test may well add as slowly as you or I do, and forArtificial Intelligence: Prospects 677