Page 79 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons

The Machine in the Ghost

the result of years of growth, from birth to adulthood, learning
through experience. That involves trial-and-error, feedback,
inspiration, cultural imitation and whatever else goes into creating
you and me. But we differ, and so do the crystalline structures that
start from tiny mineral seeds. Contingency dictates their direction of
growth; some are larger or more elaborate than others, just as
human variance appears to be a function of both nature and
nurture. Like snowflakes, we are similar but different. Now, we take
years to grow a mature brain. Crystals can take a lot less to form.
This is a process that can only be started without knowing how it
will end. Maybe these artificial intelligences will be treated like novel
antibodies in the bone marrow’s gauntlet: if they go wrong, they will
be killed before getting loose in the body to create autoimmune
problems. So here is a place where drama can occur.”
“The second factor I don’t see discussed is psychological. Freud
struggled to give his theories about the structure of the psyche a
scientific basis, fighting the tendency of his disciples to reify
mystical and mythological elements beyond his own unfortunate
use of literary associations to describe common behavior patterns.
Today, it is well understood that the overwhelming percentage of
mental processing is subconscious, and that human beings’
awareness of themselves and the outer world is largely driven by
neural activity below the level of consciousness. How does that
relate to intelligence, the mechanism or phenomenon our—excuse
the expression—think tanks are trying to duplicate? What if the
unconscious and its interaction with the stream of consciousness
fed back into the brain as one or several voices are necessary
components of intelligence? And represent experiences inevitable in
psychomechanical development, just as we are marked by the
vicissitudes of psychosexual development in our formative years?
That means psychiatry for robots.”
Izzy paused for breath. “So there you have it: assorted thoughts
in need of being turned into background for a story. Can you help?”
“A lot of issues, there,” said Cyril Kornfleck. “Science fiction
would not exist without the monkey brain always ready with its
motto, ‘Whatever can be done, will be done’. Nuclear bombs were

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