Friday, May 18, 2007

To what do your emotions...adhere?

Over at ASWOBA, John has an excellent post about artificial intelligence. I highly recommend it--both for his post, and for the article in Discovery to which he links. (It features two computer AIs trying to have what I'd guess you'd call a conversation.)

For some reason, it all reminded me of a Donald Barthelme short story called "The Explanation." (It's in Forty Stories, for those who wish to check it out). It's not an easy story to excerpt, but I hope some of its cool, uneasy brilliance comes through in the selections below. (By the way, the story features a recurring 'picture' of a machine, which the questioner alludes to throughout. The picture is of a square, about three inches by three inches, which is totally and completely black.)

Q: Do you believe that this machine could be helpful in changing the government?
A: Changing the government...
Q: Making it more responsive to the needs of the people?
A: I don't know what it is. What does it do?
Q: Well, look at it.
A: It offers no clues.
Q: It has a certain...reticence.
A: I don't know what it does.
Q: A lack of confidence in the machine.


* * *

Q: You don't trust the machine?
A: Why should I trust it?
Q: (States his own lack of interest in machines)


* * *

Q: Do you want to have your picture taken with me?
A: I don't like to have my picture taken.
Q: Do you believe that, at some point in the future, one will be able to achieve sexual satisfaction, "complete" sexual satisfaction, for instance by taking a pill?
A: I doubt that it's impossible.
Q: You don't like the idea.
A: No. I think that under these conditions, we would know less than we do now.
Q: Know less about each other.
A: Of course.

* * *

Q: I have a number of error messages I'd like to introduce here and I'd like you to study them carefully...they're numbered. I'll go over them with you: undefined variable...improper sequence of operators...improper use of hierarchy...missing operator...mix mode, that one's particularly grave...argument of a function is fixed-point...improper character in constant...improper floating-point constant...invalid character transmitted in sub-program statement, that's a bitch...no END statement.
A: I like them very much.
Q: There are hundreds of others, hundreds and hundreds.
A: You seem emotionless.
Q: That's not true.
A: To what do your emotions...adhere, if I can put it that way?

* * *

Q: There's no point in arguing that the machine is wholly successful, but it has its qualities. I don't like to use anthropomorphic language in talking about these machines, but there is one quality...
A: What is it?
Q: It's brave.
A: Machines are braver than art.
Q: Since the death of the bicycle.

3 comments:

JMW said...

Thanks, Tim. Glad the post inspired this one - Barthelme was brilliant. Those excerpts seem increasingly (and frighteningly) relevant, don't they? I need to go back and re-read some of my favorite of his stories now. I remember particularly liking the one about the guy writing to his girlfriend's srhink (about a piano she wanted?)

ANCIANT said...

That is one of his very best. It's called "The Sandman." It's in 60 Stories.

Cold Bacon said...

dude. did you just type all that in?