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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 1961)
Can Electronic Brains Be Taught to Think? (Continued jrom page 16) after studying the questionnaires, had man aged only 43 percent correct diagnoses! Future models of such "health meters" small enough to be worn by the user could eliminate the need to visit the doctor, pre dicts one electronics expert. The informa tion from the meter could be relayed to the doctor by telephone. Additional refinement of these machines might even make the doctor unnecessary, one physician jokingly suggests. Instead of the machine yielding a diagnosis, out would pop a prescription! Another startling new concept in auto matic machinery is the TransfeRobot. This one-armed robot performs many routine tasks involving parts handling, assembling, and machine operating. It can be "taught" to perform these tasks in any sequence. In a notable switch to automation, a big Port Arthur, Tex., oil refinery last year became the first petroleum plant to employ full-time computer control. Formerly, plant employees had to read and interpret a host of gauges and meters. Now all this infor mation is fed into the brain, which virtu ally runs the refinery, processing data from 110 sources to control 16 different pressures, flows, and temperatures. In the coal industry, a robot mining ma chine drills 1,000 feet underground while the operator at the controls of the electronic brain remains on the surface. One machine used by a San Francisco auto-parts dealer keeps an automatic credit check on cus tomers. If an order exceeds the customer's credit limit, the machine automatically places the order on a C.O.D. basis. With a $100,000 electronic brain now be ing readied to scrutinize Federal income-tax returns, you'll also have to be more care ful than ever in figuring out your taxes. One state recently used its electronic equipment to ferret out a group of heirs who owed a $75,000 inheritance tax. But Can They Think? Whether the "brains" can really be taught to "think" for themselves has long been a matter of heated debate among semanticists and scientists. The answer, of course, de pends on what is meant by "think." "It is false to assume that a machine can not possess any originality," contends Dr. Norbert Wiener, professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technol ogy and generally regarded as the high priest of these talented machines. Given a certain set of instructions, ma chines are capable of highly creative re sults. One computer, using its stored set of rules of musical note sequences and har mony, was able to compose fairly good, or at least original, pieces of music. Machines have been taught to play so phisticated games of checkers, chess, and bridge and to improve their playing with experience. One computer successfully proved about 300 theorems in logic, while another was taught to solve problems in trigonometry, algebra, and geometry. That computers will make 80 to 90 per cent of industry's executive decisions in the near future was predicted recently by D. B. Paquin, president of the National Machine Accountants Association. It's still too early to say what effect all this will have on your job. Some pessimists feel that it might demoralize humans not only to be taking orders from machines, but also to fear the possibility of their eventu ally being replaced by mechanical "scabs." On the other hand, most authorities believe that automation won't create a shortage of jobs, although it could very well change the nature of many. And, as they also hope fully point out, humans will always be nec essary to make the machines that is, un less this job is taken over by machines, too! They'll Be Homemakers, Too "In the 1970s, the American home will probably be run by an electronic brain that wakes the children, gets breakfast, turns on the bath water, and warms up the car," predicts Dr. Anna L. Rose Hawkes, presi dent of the American Association of Uni versity Women. "But an electronic robot will never take the place of a housewife. There still has to be someone to push the buttons." Housewives will have a helper to look forward to in the form of a "mechanical maid," now being developed, which will dart out from the wall at the push of a but ton to scrub, rinse, and dry the floor auto matically, moving in a predetermined pat tern. Another member of the push-button kitchen, also experimental, will be a self propelled serving cart which will deliver silverware and plates to the dining table. After dinner, this silent butler, stacked with ' the dirty dishes, will return to its hiding place in the wall, where it will dispose of the scraps and wash the dishes! Other such machines could revolutionize the handling of mail so you might get a letter in a matter of hours. One experi mental machine is serving as a mechanical postman by reading printed and typed ad dresses on envelopes, and sorting them into more than 40 destination slots at the rate of 10,000 letters per hour. New models al ready in the works will even be able to read handwritten addresses. Even more remarkable is the prospect of machines that hear. Impossible? Only re cently, RCA demonstrated a machine that understands 10 spoken syllables, is now working on another that will convert 100 speech sounds into writing. Even the chore of letter-writing will be easy: you'll be able to talk your letter into a voice-controlled typewriter. You may even be able to bark a number at your telephone and have it do the dialing for you. The ultimate in tele phones or mechanical translators is also not too hard to imagine: you speak in one language, and it comes out in another. Family WCPklu. Ju'tiunry 29, 1961 1 ill jr 1 PROTECTION AT HOME Hi How lucky he was to buy his "Homeowners" insurance too S from State Farm! He saved real money, and got more protection than his former "fire insurance" provided. The "Homeowners" is an all-in-one package covering (1) Home. (2) Contents, (3) Thftfts, (4) Liability. It saves about 25 over the cost of buying such cov- erages separately. And in addition, the ; 3 State Farm "Homeowners" policy usually costs less than those of most other com- p panies. You can buy one now and get I credit for your present policy. Call your x State Farm "Family Insurance Man." He's listed in the Yellow Pages under I "State Farm Insurance." I STATE FARMTHE CAREFUL BUYER'S HOME INSURANCE jjj Stilt Farm Ftra and Casually Company. Home Office: Bfoomlngton, tlllnolt re STATI f ARM INSUIANCI
