Volume 37, Number 4 · March 15, 1990
What Can't the Computer Do?
By John Maynard Smith
The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics
by Roger Penrose
Oxford University Press, 466 pp., $24.95
The year 1989 marked a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence. A computer program, Deep Thought, defeated several chess grandmasters. The Russian grandmaster Garri Kasparov, it is true, defeated Deep Thought, but who can feel confident that in ten years' time the then world champion will be able to defeat the best program? If a computer can succeed at the most beautiful and creative of games, what limits are there to the achievements of artificial intelligence? The question becomes more compelling if one accepts the current 'strong AI' philosophy. According to this view, the human brain is only a large, if somewhat inaccurate, digital computer: consciousness is a necessary property of matter organized in such a way as to carry out complex computations: it follows, therefore, that when we construct computers as complex as the human brain, they too will be conscious. Computers will think as we do, and be aware of what they are doing.
Review, 5694 words
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