Giant brains; or, Machines that think

by Edmund Callis Berkeley

OBSTACLES

The discussion above of how robot machines could be controlled supposing that men were reasonable, seems, of course, to be glaringly impractical. Men are not reasonable on most occasions most of the time. If we stopped at this point, again we would be dodging the issue. What are the obstacles to reasonable control?

There are, it seems, two big obstacles and one smaller one to reasonable types of social control over robot machines. The smaller one is ignorance, and the two big obstacles are prejudice and a narrow point of view.

Ignorance

By ignorance we mean lack of knowledge and information. Now mechanical brains are a new and intricate subject. A great many people will, through no fault of their own, naturally remain uninformed about mechanical brains and robot machines for a long time. However, there is a widespread thirst for knowledge these days: witness in magazines, for example, the growth of the article and the decline of the essay. There is also a fairly steady surge of knowledge from the austere scientific fountain of new technology. We can thus see both a demand and a supply for information in such fields as mechanical brains and robot machines. We can expect, therefore, a fairly steady decline in ignorance.

Prejudice

Prejudice is a much more serious obstacle to reasonable control over robot machines. It will be worth our while to examine it at length.

Prejudice is frequent in human affairs. For example, in some countries, but not in all, there is conflict among men, based on their religious differences. Again, in other countries, but not in all, there is wide discrimination among men, based on the color of their skin. 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. In Germany, from 1933 to 1939, we saw one of the most scientific of countries become one of the most prejudiced.

Prejudice is often difficult to detect. We find it hard to recognize even in ourselves. For a prejudice always seems, to the person who has it, the most natural attitude in the world. As we listen to other people, we are often uncertain how to separate information, guesses, humor, prejudice, etc. Circumstances compel us to accept provisionally quantities of statements just on other people’s say-so. A good test of a statement for prejudice, however, is to compare it with the scientific view.

Prejudice is most dangerous for society. Its more extreme manifestations are aggressive war, intolerance (especially of strange people and customs), violence, race hatred, etc. In the consuming hatred that a prejudiced man has towards the object of his prejudice, he is likely to destroy himself and destroy many more people besides. In former days, the handy weapon was a sword or a pistol; not too much damage could be done when one man ran amuck. But nowadays a single use of a single weapon has slain 70,000 people (the atom bomb dropped at Hiroshima), and so a great many people live anxious and afraid.

What is prejudice? How does it arise? 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. He will then break out with prejudices as if they were measles. The process of curing the disease of prejudice is about as follows: Make friends with the patient; win his trust. Encourage him to pour out his half-forgotten hates. Help him to talk them over freely, by means of questions but not criticisms, until finally the patient achieves insight, sees through his former prejudices, and drops them.

In these days prejudice is a cardinal problem of society. It is perhaps conservative to say that a chief present requirement for the survival of human society—with the atom bomb, bacterial warfare, guided missiles, etc., near at hand—is cure of prejudice and its consequences, irrational and unrestrained hate.

Narrow Point of View

A narrow point of view regarding what is desirable or good is the third obstacle to rational control over robot machines. What do we mean by this?

Our point of view as a two-year-old is based on pure self-interest. If we see a toy, we grab it. There is no prejudice about this; it is entirely natural—for two-year-olds. As we grow older, our point of view concerning what is good or desirable rapidly broadens: we think of others and their advantage besides our own. For example, we may become interested in a conservation program to conserve birds, or soil, or forests, and our point of view expands, embraces these objectives, which become part of our personality and loyalties.

Unfortunately, it seems to be true that the expanding point of view, the expanding loyalties, of most people as they grow up are arrested somewhere along the line of: self, family, neighborhood, community, section of country, nation. An honorable exception is the scientists’ old and fine tradition of world-wide unity and loyalty in the search for objective truth.

Now the problem of rational control over robot machines and other parts of the new technology is no respecter of national boundaries. To be solved it requires a world-wide point of view, a loyalty to human society and its best interests, a social point of view.

Almost all that you and I have and do and think is the result of a long history of human society on this earth. All men on the earth today are descendants of other men who lived 1000, 2000, 3000 ... years ago, whether they were Romans or Chinese or Babylonians or Mayas or members of any other race. To ride in a subway or an airplane, to talk on the telephone, to speak a language, to calculate, to survive smallpox or the black death, etc.—all these privileges are our inheritance from countless thousands of other human beings, of many countries, and nearly all of whom are now dead. During our lives we pass on to our own children an inheritance in which our own contribution is remarkably small. Since each person is the child of two others, the number of our forefathers is huge, and we are all undoubtedly blood cousins. Because of this relationship, and because we owe to the rest of society nearly all that we are, we have a social responsibility—we need to hold a social point of view. 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. We need to let go of a narrow point of view.