4. A control, which guides the machine to perform a sequence of operations.
5. Input and output devices, whereby information can go into the machine and come out of it.
6. Motors or electricity, which provide energy.
THE KINDS OF THINKING A
MECHANICAL BRAIN CAN DO
There are many kinds of thinking that mechanical brains can do. Among other things, they can:
- 1. Learn what you tell them.
- 2. Apply the instructions when needed.
- 3. Read and remember numbers.
- 4. Add, subtract, multiply, divide, and round off.
- 5. Look up numbers in tables.
- 6. Look at a result, and make a choice.
- 7. Do long chains of these operations one after another.
- 8. Write out an answer.
- 9. Make sure the answer is right.
- 10. Know that one problem is finished, and turn to another.
- 11. Determine most of their own instructions.
- 12. Work unattended.
They do these things much better than you or I. They are fast. The mechanical brain built at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania does 5000 additions a second. They are reliable. Even with hundreds of thousands of parts, the existing giant brains have worked successfully. They have remarkably few mechanical troubles; in fact, for one of the giant brains, a mechanical failure is of the order of once a month. They are powerful. The big machine at Harvard can remember 72 numbers each of 23 digits at one time and can do 3 operations with these numbers every second. The mechanical brains that have been finished are able to solve problems that have baffled men for many, many years, and they think in ways never open to men before. Mechanical brains have removed the limits on complexity of routine: the machine can carry out a complicated routine as easily as a simple one. Already, processes for solving problems are being worked out so that the mechanical brain will itself determine more than 99 per cent of all the routine orders that it is to carry out.
But, you may ask, can they do any kind of thinking? The answer is no. No mechanical brain so far built can:
- 1. Do intuitive thinking.
- 2. Make bright guesses, and leap to conclusions.
- 3. Determine all its own instructions.
- 4. Perceive complex situations outside itself and interpret them.
A clever wild animal, for example, a fox, can do all these things; a mechanical brain, not yet. There is, however, good reason to believe that most, if not all, of these operations will in the future be performed not only by animals but also by machines. Men have only just begun to construct mechanical brains. All those finished are children; they have all been born since 1940. Soon there will be much more remarkable giant brains.