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
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