Edmund Callis Berkeley

“ We can even imagine what new machinery for handling information may some day become: a small pocket instrument that we carry around with us, talking to it whenever we need to, and either storing information in it or receiving information from it. Thus the brain with a motor will guide and advise the man just as the armor with a motor carries and protects him. ”

“ The effect is not different in quality, because the new development is robot machinery; but the amount of technological unemployment coming from robot machines is likely to be considerably greater than previously.
The robot machine raises the two questions that hang like swords over a great many of us these days. The first one is for any employee: What shall I do when a robot machine renders worthless all the skill I have spent years in developing? The second question is for any businessman: How shall I sell what I make if half the people to whom I sell lose their jobs to robot machines? ”

“ Small machines using a few electronic tubes—much like a radio set, for example—and containing spools of magnetic wire or magnetic tape will doubtless be available to us. We shall be able to use them to keep addresses and telephone numbers, to figure out the income tax we should pay, to help us keep accounts and make ends meet, to remember many things we need to know, and perhaps even to give us more information. For there are a great many things that all of us could do much better if we could only apply what the wisest of us knows. ”

“ Over the whole world today, there is a sharp lack of understanding between conservatives, grading over to reactionaries, on the one hand, and liberals, grading over to radicals, on the other hand. All these differences are based on men’s attitudes, on strongly held sets of beliefs. These attitudes are not affected by “information”; the “information” is not believed. The attitudes are not subject to “judgment”; they come “before judgment”: they are prejudices. Even in the midst of all the science of today, prejudice is widespread. ”

“ Of course, in order to prepare a problem for the machine, the preparer needs to know a fair amount of the algebra of logic. This, however, is not very hard. As to reliability, the machine has in practice been out of order less than 2 per cent of operating time.
The big barrier to wide use of the machine, of course, is lack of understanding of the field of problems in which it can be applied. Even in this modern world of ours, we are in rather a primitive stage in regard to recognizing problems in logical truth and knowing how to calculate it. ”

“ The existing mechanical brains have proved that information can be automatically transferred between any two registers of a machine. No human being is needed to pick up a physical piece of information produced in one part of the machine, personally move it to another part of the machine, and there put it in again. We can think of a mechanical brain as something like a battery of desk calculators or punch-card machines all cabled together and communicating automatically. ”

“ Although it is true that the information produced only becomes good or evil after other machinery or human beings act on the information, in reality a machine with the power to produce information is constructed only for the reason of its use. We want to know what such machines can tell us only because we can then proceed to act much more efficiently than before. For example, a guided missile needs a mechanical brain only because then it can reach its target. In all cases mechanical brains are inseparable from their uses. ”

“ Each of us needs to accept and welcome a world-wide social responsibility, as a member of human society, as a beneficiary and trustee of our human inheritance. Otherwise we are drones, part of the hive without earning our keep. The social point of view is equitable, it is inspiring, and it is probably required now in order for human beings to survive. ”

“ Recently there has been a good deal of news about strange giant machines that can handle information with vast speed and skill. They calculate and they reason. Some of them are cleverer than others—able to do more kinds of problems. Some are extremely fast: one of them does 5000 additions a second for hours or days, as may be needed. Where they apply, they find answers to problems much faster and more accurately than human beings can; and so they can solve problems that a man’s life is far too short to permit him to do. ”

“ We know also that thinking in the human brain is done essentially by a process of storing information and then referring to it, by a process of learning and remembering. We know that there are no little wheels in the brain so that a wheel standing at 2 can be turned 3 more steps and the result of 5 read. Instead, you and I store the information that 2 and 3 are 5, and store it in such a way that we can give the answer when questioned. But we do not know the register in our brain where this particular piece of information is stored. ”

“ The two chief harmful effects upon humanity which are to be expected from robot machines are physical danger and unemployment. These are serious risks, and some degree of social control is needed to guard against them.
There will also be very great advantages from robot machines. The monster in Frankenstein is right when he says, “Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind.” And Harry Domin in R.U.R. is right as to possibility when he says, “There will be no poverty.... Everybody will be free from worry.” ”

“ At the moment when we combine automatic producing machinery and automatic controlling machinery, we get a vast saving in labor and a great increase in technological unemployment. In extreme cases, perhaps, the effect of robot machines will be the disappearance of men from a factory. Such a factory will be like a modern power plant that turns a waterfall into electricity: once the machinery is installed, only one watchman is ordinarily needed. ”

“ THE KALIN-BURKHART
LOGICAL-TRUTH CALCULATOR
So far we have talked about mechanical brains that are mathematicians. They are fond of numbers; their main work is with numbers; and the other kinds of thinking they do are secondary. We now come to a mechanical brain that is a logician. It is fond of reasoning—logic; its main work is with what is logically true and what is logically false; and it does not handle numbers. This mechanical brain was finished in June 1947. It is called the Kalin-Burkhart Logical-Truth Calculator. As its name tells, it calculates logical truth. ”

“ A machine can do this. The mechanical brain now at Aberdeen which was built at Bell Laboratories can examine any number that comes up in the process of a calculation and tell whether it is bigger than 3 (or any stated number) or smaller. If the number is bigger than 3, the machine [Pg 5] will choose one process; if the number is smaller than 3, the machine will choose another process.
Now suppose that we consider the basic operation of all thinking: in the human brain it is called learning and remembering, and in a machine it is called storing information and then referring to it. ”

“ We can decide what we think is the best sequence, and we can set the machine for making that kind of selection, in the same way as we decide what is “warm” and set the thermostat to produce it!
On a much larger scale, we can use mechanical brains to study economic relations in a society. Everything produced in a society is made by consuming some materials, labor, equipment, and skill. The output produced by one man or factory or industry becomes the input for other men, factories, industries. ”

“ We have now outlined the problem of social control over robot machines, supposing that human beings were reasonable. We have also discussed the practical obstacles that obstruct reasonable control.
It is not easy to think of any yet organized group of people anywhere that would have both the strength and the vision needed to solve this problem through its own efforts. For example, a part of the United Nations might have some of the vision needed, but it does not have the power. ”

“ The machine responds according to its general design and its wiring for the particular problem: it punches new cards, or it prints new marks, or it puts information into new storage places. Clerks, however, move the cards from one machine to another. They wait on the machines, keep the card feeds full, and empty the card hoppers as they fill up. A human error of putting the wrong block of cards into a machine may from time to time cause a little trouble, especially in sorting. Actually, in a year, billions of punch cards are handled precisely. ”

“ It is often easier for men to create a device than to guide it well afterwards: it is often easier for a scientist to study his science than to study the results for good or evil that his discoveries may lead to. But it is not right nor proper for a scientist, a man who is loyal to truth as an ideal, to have no regard for what his discoveries may lead to. ”

“ By designing Simon, we shall see how we can put together physical equipment for handling information in such a way as to get a very simple mechanical brain. At every point in the design of Simon, we shall make the simplest possible choice that will still give us a machine that: handles information, transfers information automatically from one part of the machine to another, and has control over the sequence of operations. ”

“ Another large group of problems for which we can foresee the use of machines that think is found in business and economics.
For example, consider production scheduling in a business or a factory. The machine takes in a description of each order received by the business and a description of its relative urgency. The machine knows (that is, has in its memory) how much of each kind of raw material is needed to fill the order and what equipment and manpower are needed to produce it. ”

“ How can it be cured, and thus removed from obstructing reasonable control over robot machines and the rest of today’s amazing scientific developments?
Prejudice is a disease of men’s minds. It is infectious. The cause and development of the disease are about as follows: Deprive someone of something he deeply needs, such as affection, food, or opportunity. In this way hurt him, make him resentful, hostile; but prevent him from expressing his resentments in a reasonable way, giving him instead false outlets, such as other people to hurt, myths to believe, hostile behavior patterns to imitate. ”

“ By reliability we mean the extent to which the results produced by the machine can be relied on to be right. The machine contains no built-in device for making its operations reliable. So, if we wish to check a multiplication, for example, we can do the multiplication a second time, interchanging the multiplier and the multiplicand. But if, say, digit 16 of the product were not transferring correctly, we would get the same wrong result both ways and we would not have a sufficient check. Thus, when we set up a problem for the machine to do, one of the big tasks we have is checking. ”

“ A final degree of reliability is gained when most of the time the machine operates unattended. Then, there is no human operator standing by who may fail to do the correct thing at the moment when the machine [Pg 175] needs some attention. In fact, the motto for the room housing a mechanical brain should become, “Don’t think; let the machine do it for you.” Unattended operation from the end of one working day to the beginning of the next, with the machine changing itself from one problem to another problem, has already been proved possible on the Bell Laboratories machine. ”

“ In regard to the effects of robot machines on unemployment, again, if men were reasonable, the problem would be soluble. The problem is equivalent to the problem of abundance: how should men distribute the advantages of a vast increase in production among all the members of society in a fair and sensible way? A vast increase in production is not so impossible as it may seem. ”

“ Not much more is yet known, however, about the operation of handling information in a human brain. We do not yet know how the nerves are connected so that we can do what we do. Probably the greatest obstacle to knowledge is that so far we cannot observe the detailed structure of a living human brain while it performs, without hurting or killing it. ”