Revisiting the past can leave the reader with a range of reactions, including both bemusement at then-embryonic developments and amazement at the accuracy of forecast extrapolations.
After reading the sentence that follows this one, pause for a moment and guess when it was first written, prior to plunging forward in my own prose:
The amount of effort and money put into artificial intelligence has been quite limited, and there are only about a half-dozen major centers of such activity in the world.
Clearly, this quote is a “few” years old! Consider, for example, that last September Gartner forecasted that worldwide spending on AI would hit $1.5 trillion for that (last) year. The above quote is from renowned astrophysicist Carl Sagan’s treatise, “Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science”, first published in 1979, with which I recently reconnected over a long weekend read.
Most people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years. (Bill Gates)
Specifically, it came from chapter 20, “In Defense of Robots”, which in its original form was titled “In Praise of Robots” and appeared in the January 1975 edition of Natural History magazine. Unsurprisingly, given that the source material is more than a half-century old at this point, some of it is charmingly dated. Consider, for example, this chapter excerpt:
There will be strong pressures for continued miniaturization of intelligent machines. It is clear that remarkable miniaturization has already occurred. Vacuum tubes have been replaced by transistors, wired circuits by printed circuit boards, and entire computer systems by silicon chip microcircuitry. Today, a circuit that used to occupy much of a 1930 radio set can be printed on the tip of a pin.
Or, speaking of the current state of intelligent machines, this passage:
The ten best chess players in the world still have nothing to fear from any present computer, but the situation is changing. Recently, a computer for the first time did well enough to enter the Minnesota State Chess Open. This may be the first time that a non-human has entered a major sporting event on the planet Earth…The computer did not win the chess open, but this is the first time one has done well enough to enter such a competition. Chess playing computers are improving extremely rapidly.
And then there’s this, focusing on Sagan’s primary area of expertise, space:
In the exploration of Mars, unmanned vehicles have already soft-landed, and only a little further in the future they will roam about the surface of the Red Planet as some now do on the Moon.
What would Sagan have thought about the fact that, as I’m writing these words, NASA just announced that its Perseverance rover has traveled the distance of a marathon on Mars, notably much of it autonomously? He wouldn’t, I’d argue, be at all surprised. And that, dear readers, is at the core of why I’m focusing on his book, and this chapter in particular, today. To wit, immediately after the prior quote, he elaborated on his prognostication “tease”, writing:
The Viking landers deposited on Mars in summer of 1976 have a very interesting array of sensors and scientific instruments, which are the extension of human senses to an alien environment. The obvious post-Viking device for Martian exploration, one which takes advantage of the Viking technology, is a Viking rover in which the equivalent of an entire Viking spacecraft, but with considerably improved science, is put on wheels or tractor treads and permitted to rove slowly over the Martian landscape.
But now we have a new problem, one that is never encountered in machine operation on the Earth’s surface. Although Mars is the second closest planet, it is so far from the Earth that light travel becomes significant. At a typical relative position of Mars and the Earth, the planet is 20 light minutes away. Thus, if the spacecraft were confronted with a steep incline, it might send a message of inquiry back to Earth. Forty minutes later, the response would arrive saying something like, “For heaven’s sake, stand dead still!” But by then, of course, an unsophisticated machine would have tumbled into a gully.
Consequently, any Martian rover requires slope and roughness sensors. Fortunately, these are readily available and are even seen in some children’s toys. When confronted with a precipitous slope or large boulder, the spacecraft would either stop until receiving instructions from the Earth in response to its query and televised picture of the terrain, or back off and start in another and safer direction. Much more elaborate contingency decision networks can be built into the onboard computers of spacecraft of the 1980s.
Any sufficiently advanced technology no longer distinguishes itself from pure magic. (Arthur C. Clarke)
The fundamental point of In Defense of Robots, at least per my interpretation of it, is to provide Sagan with a platform to answer a question he posited at the beginning:
The powerful abilities of computing machines to do arithmetic hundreds of millions of times faster than unaided human beings are legendary. But what about really difficult matters? Can machines in any sense think through a new problem? Can they make discussions of the branch-contingency-tree variety with which we think of as characteristically human?
Sagan’s answer to that question was an unqualified “yes”, and here’s what he thought it would look like, again specific to astrophysics and related topics:
In the development of such machines we find a kind of convergent evolution. Viking is, in a curious sense, like some great outsized clumsily constructed insect. It is not yet ambulatory and is certainly incapable of self-reproduction, but it has an exoskeleton, it has a wide range of insect-like sensory organs, and it is about as intelligent as a dragonfly.
But Viking has some advantages that insects do not. It can, on occasion, by inquiring of its controllers on Earth, assume the intelligence of a human being. The controllers are able to reprogram the Viking computer on the basis of the decisions they make.
As the field of machine intelligence advances, and as increasingly distant objects in the solar system become accessible to exploration, we will see the development of increasingly sophisticated onboard computers, slowly climbing the phylogenetic tree from insect intelligence to crocodile intelligence to squirrel intelligence and, in the not very remote future, I think, to dog intelligence.
That said, Sagan was also keen to expand far beyond astrophysics with his forecasts, even to the realm of psychoanalysis. Consider chatbots’ increasingly common use as virtual therapists, albeit with diverse user experiences and outcomes, as you read the following excerpt:
In a time when more and more people in our society seem to be in need of psychiatric counseling, and when timesharing of computers is widespread, I can even imagine the development of a network of computer psychotherapeutic terminals something like arrays of large telephone booths in which for a few dollars a session we are able to talk to an attentive tested and largely non-directive psychotherapist. Ensuring the confidentiality of the psychiatric dialogue is one of the several important steps still to be worked out.
Or consider something a bit “closer to home” for the broad engineering community, that of humanoid and other robotic systems for industrial and other related applications:
If intelligent machines for terrestrial mining and space exploratory applications are pursued, the time cannot be far off when household and other domestic robots will become commercially feasible…There are many common tasks, ranging from bartending to floor washing, that involve a very limited array of intellectual capabilities, albeit substantial stamina and patience.
All-purpose ambulatory household robots, which perform domestic functions as well as a proper 19th century butler, are probably many decades off, but more specialized machines, each adapted to specific household functions, are probably already on the horizon. It is possible to imagine many other civic tasks and essential functions of everyday life carried out by intelligent machines.
Much in life is simply a matter of perspective. It’s not inherently good or bad, a success or failure; it’s how we choose to look at things that makes the difference. (David Niven)
But I can’t help but wonder: was Sagan too sanguine about the societal upheaval caused by AI-powered robotic (and broader AI) supplant?
For the development of domestic and civic robots to be a general civic good, the effect of re-employment of those human beings displaced by the robots must be of course arranged. But over a human generation, that should not be too difficult, particularly if there are enlightened educational reforms. Human beings enjoy learning.
If anything, he seemed more concerned that human beings’ overreaction (at least in his eyes) to such displacement might unnecessarily delay or even preclude this transition and broader transformation, to the broader detriment of our species (thereby at least in part explaining, I suspect, the shift from robot “praise” to “defense” from the 1975 article to 1979 book chapter):
We appear to be on the verge of developing a wide variety of intelligent machines capable of performing tasks too dangerous, too expensive, too onerous, or too boring for human beings. The development of such machines is, in my mind, one of the few legitimate spin-offs of the space program. The efficient exploitation of energy and agriculture, upon which our survival as a species depends, may even be contingent on the development of such machines.
The main obstacle seems to be a very human problem, the quiet feeling that comes stealthily and unbidden, and argues that there is something threatening or inhuman about machines performing tasks as well or better than human beings, or a sense of loathing for creatures made of silicon and germanium rather than proteins and nucleic acids. But in many respects, our survival as a species depends on our transcending such primitive chauvinisms.
In part, our adjustment to intelligent machines is a matter of acclimatization. There are already cardiac pacemakers that can sense the beat of a human heart. Only when there is the slightest hint of fibrillation does the pacemaker stimulate the heart. This is a mild but very useful sort of machine intelligence. I cannot imagine the wearer of this device resenting its intelligence [EDITOR NOTE: as regular readers will likely already understand, I particularly resonated with this point].
I think in a relatively short period of time there will be a very similar sort of acceptance for much more intelligent and sophisticated machines. There is nothing inhuman about an intelligent machine. It is indeed an expression of those superb intellectual qualities that only human beings, of all creatures on this planet, now possess.
Whether or not you resonate with Sagan’s perspectives in the excerpts I’ve shared, I suspect you’ll (near-)universally agree with my admiration for the accuracy of his prophecies, along with the rare combination of intelligence and open-mindedness (with at least one notable exception) that were at their foundation. Regardless, I encourage you to pick up a copy of Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science and give it a read for yourself.
It’s only $6.99 on Kindle as I write this (and as I read it), and I also commonly come across both hardcover and paperback copies of it at used bookstores. There’s always also your public library, of course. And worst case, I stumbled across a YouTube video of someone reading the (bulk of the) text of the In Praise of Robots chapter:
Fair warning: there’s at least one several-paragraph section missing (I suspect due to a multi-“take” merging edit error, not intentionally), ironically the one from which the quote that opened this writeup came. And the regularly changing “psychedelic” special effects (which I suspect were an attempt, apparently successfully, to circumvent copyright infringement algorithms) compel me to encourage you to focus solely on the audio. But, hey…free!
Regardless of how you end up consuming Broca’s Brain, I hope you find it a fruitful experience, versus a waste of time. Be sure to come back here afterward and share your thoughts in the comments, ok? Thanks!
—Brian Dipert is the associate editor, as well as a contributing editor, at EDN.
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