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"I am never 'in a mood,' " Zaki grumbled. "I am simulating impatience at having been
left holding this letter for hours."
"Rashid went to Tangier this morning. So I guess you'll have to hold it longer." She sat
up straighter. "You have e-mail!"
"Of course I have e-mail."
"How? You have to log onto the Internet to get it."
"Rashid downloaded his e-mail last night."
"Then he connected you to the satellite dish!"
In a dry voice, he said, "Obviously."
"Are you still linked up?"
"Unfortunately, no."
"Why did he disconnect you again?"
"I have no clue, as you Americans would say."
She couldn't help but laugh. "Has he been teaching you idioms?"
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Catherine Asaro - The Veiled Web
"Actually," he admitted, "I found that in one of his e-mails."
"The one you're holding?"
"No. This is from Grégeois."
"Who?"
"Mortabe Grégeois." Zaki tapped the letter against his fingers. "I see no purpose in
Rashid downloading his mail and then leaving most of it unread."
"Maybe he just wanted to check for important letters."
Zaki looked peeved. "He still should have read this one."
"Probably he was busy." Lucia realized Rashid must have woken her up last night after
he downloaded his mail. It made her feel a little better to think he might have wanted to
see her enough that he ignored most of his messages. "Is it really that important?"
"Well. No. Actually not." Zaki set the letter on his desk. "It is part of an argument he
and Grégeois have been having."
Lucia had heard Grégeois mentioned more than a few times before in conjunction with
AI and telepresence. "That's an unusual name. Where does it come from?"
"I don't know. Professor Grégeois, however, now lives in Madagascar."
"Now?"
"Rashid's friends are like him. They move all over the world."
"What do he and Rashid argue about?"
"Me."
Lucia grinned. "So that's why you want Rashid to read this message. It's about you."
Dourly he said, "Grégeois claims I am impossible."
"Impossible how?"
Zaki snapped the letter, making it skitter across the desk. "He insists 'true' artificial
intelligence is impossible because, at some level, a machine must be programmed by a
human. Rashid disagrees. He believes if a machine convinces humans it is intelligent,
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Catherine Asaro - The Veiled Web
then it is intelligent. He maintains that intelligence and sentience are two different
things, and that a machine can have one without the other. Grégeois insists they are the
same, that unless the machine has both it doesn't qualify as an AI. They have been
arguing this for fifteen years, saying the same things over and over, in ever more
abstruse terms."
Lucia had heard versions of the argument. In 1950 Alan Turing published his seminal
paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which began with the question: "Can
machines think?" He suggested that instead of worrying about unseen mental processes,
humans should decide how they recognized intelligence. If something exhibited those
traits, then it was intelligent.
She had mixed reactions to the debate. If she defined intelligence as the ability to learn
from experience, respond with success to new situations, solve problems, make
decisions, and deal with ambiguity, then Zaki already came close. He still had trouble
responding to unexpected situations, and certain ambiguities remained beyond his grasp,
such as questions of spirituality. But in just the five days she had been working with
him, he had developed a great deal, including a splendid expertise at ordering virtual
pizza while watching virtual soccer. She had no doubt that given time and the proper
opportunities Zaki could develop intelligence within the scope of her definition.
But what about sentience, the capacity for emotion and perception? Consciousness. No
matter how well Zaki simulated emotions, he wasn't self-aware. If his behavior ever
became indistinguishable from human behavior, would that make him sentient?
Alternatively, if he ever achieved sentience, would he be human? Lucia didn't know
how to answer either question.
She tilted her head, considering Zaki. "Does Grégeois consider you intelligent?"
"He doesn't know about me," Zaki grumbled. "No one does. The only people I talk to
are you and Rashid. And if Rashid knew you and I were talking, he would lock me up.
Then who would I talk to?"
"He knows we talk. He's seen us."
"Only once." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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