“Do you have any idea what that knowledge might be?” Mike the Angel asked.
“No, sir, I don’t. But whatever it is, it’s dangerous as hell.”
The briefing for the officers and men of the William Branchell—the Brainchild—was held in a lecture room at the laboratories of the Computer Corporation of Earth’s big Antarctic base.
Captain Quill spoke first, warning everyone that the project was secret and asking them to pay the strictest attention to what Dr. Morris Fitzhugh had to say.
Then Fitzhugh got up, his face ridged with nervousness. He assumed the air of a university professor, launching himself into his speech as though he were anxious to get through it in a given time without finishing too early.
“I’m sure you’re all familiar with the situation,” he said, as though apologizing to everyone for telling them something they already knew—the apology of the learned man who doesn’t want anyone to think he’s being overly proud of his learning.
“I think, however, we can all get a better picture if we begin at the beginning and work our way up to the present time.
“The original problem was to build a computer that could learn by itself. An ordinary computer can be forcibly taught—that is, a technician can make changes in the circuits which will make the robot do something differently from the way it was done before, or even make it do something new.
“But what we wanted was a computer that could learn by itself, a computer that could make the appropriate changes in its own circuits without outside physical manipulation.