THE INTELLIGENCE OF MACHINES

In a 1951 lecture Turing, Alan (1951), Turing argued, "It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. There would be no question of the machines dying, and they would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore we should have to expect the machines to take control, in the way that is mentioned in Samuel Butler's Erewhon." Also in a lecture broadcast on the BBC (Turing, Alan 1951). He expressed the opinion: "If a machine can think, it might think more intelligently than we do, and then where should we be? Even if we could keep the machines in a subservient position, for instance by turning off the power at strategic moments, we should, as a species, feel greatly humbled. . . . This new danger. . . is certainly something which can give us anxiety." as interpreted by Seth Baum. Hubert Dreyfus writes: "In general, by accepting the fundamental assumptions that the nervous system is part of the physical world and that all physical processes can be described in a mathematical formalism which can, in turn, be manipulated by a digital computer, one can arrive at the strong claim that the behavior which results from human 'information processing,' whether directly formalizable or not, can always be indirectly reproduced on a digital machine." (Dreyfus 1972). John Searle writes: "Could a man-made machine think? Assuming it possible produce artificially a machine with a nervous system, the answer to the question seems to be obviously; yes ... Could a digital computer think? If by 'digital computer' you mean anything at all that has a level of description where it can be correctly described as the instantiation of a computer program, then again the answer is, of course, yes, since we are the instantiations of any number of computer programs, and we can think." (Searle 1980).