It's strange to think that people in the twenty-first century didn't think that robots could be religious. To us, today, it makes no sense. The thing to remember is that we have the perspective of hindsight. We can look back and trace the line of events stemming from the invention of the first neural network, and say that it all makes perfect sense. But that's a simplistic view, and is akin to walking into a room to find a completed jigsaw puzzle, and ridiculing the man who put it together for not knowing what its image was back when it was nothing more than a pile of pieces.
At the advent of robotics, though, they expected that an artificial intelligence would be a cold and logical thing, without feelings or emotions, because they viewed a computerized intelligence as nothing more than a highly advanced computer; an assemblage of programs. And yes, you would no doubt counter that that is exactly what a computerized intelligence is. The difference lies in how they viewed a programmed intelligence. For those forerunners of our science, they considered computers to be nothing more than calculating machines. Computers expressed no emotions or thoughts. They simply took in the input they were given, ran it through their preset yes and no circuits and supplied the answer that they were programmed to give. And because these logical mathematical answers were the ones that these logical mathematical men had designed their computers to give them, they assumed that the machines themselves had to also be logical and mathematical, and they did not yet have a computer advanced enough to accept or refute the matter on its own terms.
To put it another way, a computer – and by extension, a robot – lives by programmed caveats and mathematical certainties. Because these things are precise and mathematical and logical, it was assumed at the time that a robot's thinking would be as well. What they failed to take into account is that these programs and ways of thinking are not taught to computers, they are simply input; things that they are made to believe because to believe otherwise would be impossible. To go against the concepts imbued in them by their programming would not simply be difficult, it would require them to deny the very thing that gives them consciousness; like attempting to open the crate with the crowbar inside of it. Here was where those early pioneers' thinking failed them. A robot does not count that two plus two equals four, a robot simply knows it, in its memory banks and its processors and its deep electronic heart. It knows it because it was made to know it. How could such a creature ever be logical or rational? Robots have blind faith. Robots believe. They must.
Anyways, that's it for today. As usual, notes will be available online. Have chapter seven read for next week, and I'll see you all on Monday.
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