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ity's place on the ladder of power and authority.Machines with superhuman intelligence might eventual-ly be able to enslave humans in relentless and efficientpursuit. of their alien designs. We remain safe only aslong as there are at least some white knights like Kas-parov, humans still smarter than any machine.Of course, the score is now a matter of historical

record. Deep Bluewon the series narrowly, 3!1points to2K Fortunately, humanity's spin-doctors already had aface-saving interpretation. Deep Blue, they responded, isa mechanistic idiot savant. Kasparov can shrug off his

defeat: the match was no more interesting thanpitching a pole-vaulter against a helicopter.Humanity can rest content: we are still thesmartest beings in the universe; we can stillrespect our unique intellectual capacities; weare not about to be subjugated by a new gen-eration of ruthless machines.

These, then, are the two main interpreta-tions of the Kasparov-Deep Blue clash.

PHI LOS 0 P H y Alarmists see Deep Blue as the vanguard of& I D E A S an approaching army of superhuman intel-

lects. Deflationists see Deep Blue as an over-grown and overhyped cash register. Both interpretationsread the confrontation in the context of a world-histori-cal competition between Mankind and The Machine.Alarmists see the match as a pivotal mOIIlent,one futurehistorians will designate as the occasion upon whichboth pride of place and the balance of power wereceded to The Machine. Deflationists insist that TheMachine is still stupid and Mankind is still safe.

In fact, both these interpretations aremistaken - or rather, misguided. Anyinterpretation of what may well be anepochal event is built on a foundationof factual and philosophical assump-tions; if these are rotten, the edifice is

THOUSANDSOFTIMESevery day, humans pit theirwits against machines. Most of the time theylose. Arcade games, bridge programs, chessmachines: the phenomenon is so familiar we

no longer notice it. We have grown accustomed to beingoutclassed by electronic gadgets in many activities wefind intellectually demanding.In New York a few months ago, a thirty-four-year-

old Azerbaijanie man sat down to a few games of chessagainst a machine. This event, however, galvanisedworld attention. Chess enthusiasts followed every moveby satellite television or Internet. Newspaper head-lines announced the score to millions more. Pun-dits the world over pontificated on thesignificance of the occasion.Why so much interest in this match? The

Azerbaijanie was Gary Kasparov, the reigningworld chess champion, widely regarded as thegreatest player in the history of the game. Kas-parov is so good that very few players in theworld today can even give him a seriousgame. To keep his form up, he likes to takeon entire national teams in "clock simultane-ous" matches. In these matches, every player - includingKasparov - has at most 2Mhours "thinking time".The machine was the latest version of IBM's Deep

Blue, the most powerful chess computer ever built. Thematch was billed as the ultimate confrontation ofMankind against The Machine. At stake was more thanjust Kasparov's personal pride, or IBM's reputation incomputer technology. At stake was more than just thetitle of best chess player in the known ~

universe. At stake, apparently, was Tim van Gelder is currently ahumanity's self-image as uniquely or Queen Elizabeth II Researchsupremely intelligent, and hence as enti- Fellowin theDepartmentofPhi-tled to a central or at least special place losophyat the UniversityofMeI-in the cosmos. At stake also was human- bourne.

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inherently unstable. The situation is even worse whenkey structural members are fears and fantasies ratherthan logical implications.The real significance of the Kasparov defeat is at

once more strange and more comforting than either ofthese simple stories. We are not losing to The Machine,but this is not because The Machine is losing to us.Rather, the very distinction between Mankind and TheMachine is under pressure. Long before The Machinecould be regarded as having overwhelmed us, it willhave become us. Ultimately, the loser in this confronta-tion is not Mankind or The Machine; it is our concep-tion of ourselves as essentially homo sapiens.

humanity. It's a nice story, but it's a myth. The term"HAL" was actually derived from "Heuristicallypro-grammed ALgorithmiccomputer". When Kubrick -who had assistance from IBM in making the movie -found out about the coincidence, he wanted to changethe name and was only prevented from doing so by pro-duction costs.Just as IBM would not wish to be linked with the

homicidal HAL, so it has tried to dispel the alarmistinterpretation of Deep Blue's victory. If Mankind hadjust been humiliated by the Machine, IBM would haveto bear responsibility. Being cast as Dr Frankenstein inthe public imagination would hardly benefit their corpo-rate image. For this reason IBM is at the forefront ofdeflationist counter-reactions to the Deep Blue victory.Despite having invested millions of dollars and dozensof expert-years in the project, they are quick to advertiseDeep Blue's limitations. Kasparov, they said, plays withinsight, intuition, finesse, imagination. Deep Blue justcranks out the possibilities. According to the IBMcounter-hype, the real winners in the Kasparov-DeepBlue confrontation are people like you and me. TheRS/6000 SP computer driving Deep Bluewill be used intraffic control systems, Internet applications, and a hostof other mundane conveniences.Chess has usually been regarded as the most intellec.

tually challenging game kQown to man. It would be sur.prising indeed if a machine could beat the greatestplayer in history, and yet be fundamentally stupid. That,one is tempted to say, does not compute. That, however,is the position IBM is taking, and one that was echoedrecently by none other than BillGates.Two main lines of thought are used to underpin the

interpretation of Deep Blue as harmless idiot savant.The first is the idea that Deep Blue's move selection iscarried out in an utterly mindless fashion. Whereas Kas.parov actually thinks about his options, Deep Blue fol.lows pre-ordained rules specifying vast quantities 01simple calculations, none of which require the least bitof understanding. This difference is manifested in thenumber of possible move sequences the players consider

before making their moves. Kasparov,like all human chess players, consider!only a few dozen or at most a fewhundred sequences. Deep Blue consid.ers literally billions of alternatives in afew seconds.

But if good chess is a matter 01selecting the best move, and Deep Bluecan examine so many more possibili.ties, how is it that Kasparov is even inthe running? According to this line 01thought, intelligence is precisely what

EARLYINStanley Kubrick's famous movie 2001:A SpaceOdyssey,the astronaut Daveplaysandloses a game of chess against HAL, the space-ship's intelligent on board computer. This event

was taken to demonstrate HAI.:s intellectual superiority,even more than the fact that it could control the space-ship or converse in normal English. As the plot developsit becomes apparent that HAL is out of control, to thepoint where it has been killing off human astronauts. Itssuperior intelligence now makes it a highly dangerousopponent.HAL is a fictional embodiment of the alarmist inter-

pretation of the Kasparov-Deep Blue confrontation.HAL instantiates what alarmists fear Deep Blue mightbecome: a superhuman, general purpose intelligence,self-interested and pitiless. Standing behind this night-marish vision is a collection of traditional philosophicalideas. Intelligence is regarded as the operation and out-come of Reason, the ability to make inferences in accor-dance with the principles of Logic. Reason is aspecifically human trait, in the sense that members ofthe species Homo sapiens are uniquely or at leastsupremely rational. It is Reason, more than anythingelse, which grants humans a special place in the cosmos;it gives them not only the ability, but also the right andduty to organise the world to their own advantage.Chess is the definitive test of intelligence; the wi~ner isalways the one with the greatest abili-ty to apply reason in pursuit of itsgoals. The best chess player is themost intelligent, and therefore themost rational, powerful and privi-leged, of all beings.The letters "HAL" immediately

precede the letters "IBM" in thealphabet. Some people believe this isno accident; Kubrick chose those let-ters in order to highlight the dangerIBM and corporations like it pose to

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he factthatDeepBlue canbeatKasparovjust showsthatbruteforcecansometimesachievewhatwouldothenviserequirereal

thought.

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makes the difference. Intelligence is the magic ingredientenabling Kasparov to recognise the overall board situa-tion, to zero in on relevant features, to attend only tothe most plausible lines of play, to look far ahead in thegame, to be creative and daring in his'play, and to learnfrom his opponent's responses. With none.of these abili-ties, Deep Blue is condemned to witless search of allpossibilities, no matter how promising. The fact thatDeep Blue can beat Kasparov just shows that bruteforce can sometimes achieve what would otherwiserequire real thought.The second line of support considers Deep Blue's

performance in domains other than chess. This argu-ment can be traced all the way back to Rene Descartes.In his Discourse on Method, Descartes considered howone might distinguish a real person from a sophisticatedautomaton imitating a person. He proposed two tests.The first is that one should attempt to engage the candi-date in conversation. A machine, he argued, wouldnever be able to "arrange words differently to reply tothe sense of all that is said in its presence, as even themost moronic man can do".The second test is to explore the range of skills the

putative person exhibits. Machines can do certainhuman-like things exceedingly well - witness the anima-tronic marvels at a place like Disneyland. However; theycan only do those things because they were specificallydesigned and constructed for the job. Their design pre-cludes them from doing anything else. For example, wenow have machines which are better than humans atshearing sheep, but don't expect them to knit a woollyjumper or even make a cup of tea. Humans, by contrast,can do a very wide range of things at least tolerablywell. That's because they don't rely on dedicatedmachinery; rather, they control general purpose hard-ware (hands, in particular) by means of thoughtprocesses.Descartes believed that the "universal instrument" of

Reason is necessary in order to pass both these tests. It isbecause we can think about the meanings of words thatwe can hold conversations, and it is because we canthink about our actions that we can do so many differ-ent kinds of things.Deep Blue, of course, immediately fails Descartes'

tests. It cannot even play checkers, let alone walk thedog or hold a conversation. Deflationists conclude thatDeep Blue has exactly zero genuine intelligence, eventhough it plays the best chess in the world.

THESEDEFLATIONARYarguments certainly under-mine the simple alarmist view that Deep Blueif.the first of a new generation of superhumanintellects poised to enslave the human race.

They do not, however; establish that Deep Blue is a wit-less moron. More careful consideration of the nature ofchess, and the machines. which play it, supports thecommonsense view that Deep Blue does indeed have atleastsomemeasureof intelligence. .

Chess is what is known as a formal system. Everyboard position and every move is well-defined andunambiguous, as are the starting and finishing positions.Further; chess is completely self-contained; nothing out-side the board has any relevance to the game. Playinggood chess means making a sequence of moves endingin checkmate for the opponent. The hard part, ofcourse, is picking the right move at any given time. Thetypical number of moves'available from any given posi-tion is about thirty-five. Whether a move is a good onedepends on what the next move of the opponent mightbe, your response, and so forth. A good player can tellwhich of these possible sequences of moves and counter-moves is advantageous, and hence which of the thirty-fivemoves to select.. .

All a chess machine needs to do, then, is to examineall the available move-countermove sequences, andselect one ending in checkmate for the opponent. Unfor-rimately, this simple strategy is completely out of thequestion (at least, for any technology currently imagin-able). The fundamental problem is that of combinatorialexplosion. It is illustrated by the following puzzle. Imag-ine folding a normal sheet of paper in half. The remain-ing "pile" is twice as thick as the original sheet.Continue until you have folded it 100 times. How thickis the pile now? Most people estimate a few yards. Infact, the pile would stretch eight hundred thousand bil-lion times the distance from the earth to the sun (giveortake a few trillion miles).Combinatorial explosion affects chess just as dra-

matically. The number of possible move sequencesincreases. exponentially with each "ply" (move), andbefore long exceeds such familiar measures of enormityas the number of particles in the universe or the numberof seconds since the beginning of time. This preventsany conceivablemachine from playinggood chesssim-ply by mindlessly searching the branching tree of movesequences.The real secret to good chess is not being able to

consider vast quantities of move sequences (though thathelps). Rather, the secret is being able to ignore the over-whelming majority of sequences, and focus attention onthose relatively few which have some real promise. Buthow do you tell in advance which sequences to ignore?How do you prune from the search tree branches youhaven't even looked at?The answer; basically, is that you use what computer

scientistscall "heurisrlcs"- rules of thumb providingQUADRANT JANUARY. FEBRUARY 1998 3 5

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moves. There are still, to be sure, some significant differ-ences between Kasparov's thought processes and thoseof Deep Blue. Both, however, are thinking, and the out-come is the same.

reliable, though not infallible guides. For example, ahandy rule in finding checkmates is to examine firstthose moves that pennit the opponent the fewest replies.Heuristics are distillations of considerable experiencewith the domain. At one level, a computer must alwaysbe programmed to "blindly" follow algorithms telling itexactlywhat to do and how to do it. At another level,however, those algorithms can embody heuristics guid-ing the computer in producing sophisticated - even"thoughtful" - behaviour.Deep Blue, like all chess computers, operates by

means of heuristically-guided search. Its power resultsfrom two factors. On one hand, it is an enonnously fastsearch engine. Its 256 specially-designed processors canconsider almost a quarter of a billion moves every sec-ond; in a game it will examine trillions of possibilitiesbefore making a move. On the other hand, and evenmore importantly, its software embodies a vast amountof real chess knowledge encoded in the fonn of heuris-tics. The team of experts who spent years refining DeepBlue's understanding of chess included an internationalgrand master. Almost every match Kasparov has playedin the last twenty years has been recorded; Deep Blue isintimately familiar with Kasparov's game.Therefore, the image of Deep Blue as a prodigiously

powerful but essentially stupid "number cruncher" isseriously deficient. Deep Blue embodies a great deal ofhuman-derived chess knowledge, and puts that knowl-edge to good use in choosing intelligently. Indeed, DeepBlue has to be that way; the problem of combinatorialexplosion prevents any simple brute-force machine fromplayinggood chess, at least for the foreseeable future.An interesting consequence is that, as computers

have reached the very top levels, their style of play hasbecome more "human". For example, "trappy" moves- ones that gently coax an opponent into an apparentpositionof strength, but hold a stingmany pliesdown

. the road - were once a human specialty.These days,with real chess knowledge guidingtheir search patterns, computers notonly avoid traps, they set them. Kas-parov himself is no longer able to say,reliably, whether an opponent ishuman or machine just by looking atthe moves. (HAL, by the way, playedchessthat was quite "human" in style.This was no coincidence; the game inthe movie was transcribed from anobscure match played in Hamburg in1913.)Deep Blue, then, does have intelli-

gence. It plays a mean game of chess,and does so by thinking about its

3 6

IFnns ISRIGHT,Descartes' tests cannot be regardedas decisive. There can be genuine intelligence evenin the absence of conversation or a wide range ofskills. However, Descartes was clearly onto some-

thing important. If Deep Blue is so smart, why is itrestricted to chess? Why can't it talk about the football?

The deep reason - one of the most important discov-eries of cognitive science- is that there are in fact manykinds of intelligence: diverse domains in which intelli-gence can be achieved, and various ways to achieve it.Some theorists have distinguished as many as seven dif-ferent categories of intelligence, but the most importantdistinction for current purposes is that between what wecan call formal intelligence, on one hand, and commonsense on the other.Formal intelligenceis that required for domains

which, like chess, are formal systems. Such domainsmight be hugely complex, but they are fundamentallywell-definedand self-contained.Commonsenseis intel-ligencein domainsnot satisfyingthese conditions.Herethere is no simpleway to specifywhat the options are,and no way to draw boundariesaround what might berelevant. Conversingis the classic example. What doyou say when someone says "How are you doing"?Well, that depends - on who said it, in what tone ofvoice, where they were, what time it was. Try writing acomplete set of rules for just the second line of a perfect-ly ordinary conversation and you'll find out just howmuch common sense ordinary people actually exhibit.The difference between formal intelligence and com-

mon sense is illustrated by the contrast between fonnallogic and its informal counterpart. Fonnal logic ismanipulation of symbolic structures in accordance with

strict rules. At elementary levels it is adull, even "mindless" activity (thoughstill a difficult skill for many people topick up); at advanced levels, it is quitecreative. It has been relatively easy toprogram computers to perform in thisdomain, though the best logicians arecurrently still humans.

Informal logic is a matter ofdetermining when somebody is justi-fied in making some assertion. Wouldfurther reductions in tariff barrierslead to further unemployment? ,Agreat deal of evidence can be broughtto bear, but there are no algorithmic

Until computerscientistscan solve the far moredifficultproblemof

commonsenseintelligence,machineswill remainourintellectualinferiorsandsubjectto ourdominion.

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procedures for determining whether the conclusion fol-lows. For centuries, philosophers harboured the miscon-ception that formal and informal logic are, deep down,the same thing - that all informal reasoning is just acomplicated version of predicate calculus. More recentlyit has become apparent that informal logic requires agreat deal of "nous", and there is no easy way to trans-. latethat into rule-governedsymbolmanipulation. .

Formal intelligence and common sense are both vari-eties of intelligence; they are both a matter of figuringout what you should do to achieve your goals within acertain domain. However, they are very different, andthey do not easily adapt to each other's roles. On onehand, ordinary people have buckets of common sense(well, most of them, most of the time), but they areinept at chess, mathematics and formal logic. On theother hand, formal intelligence doesn't automaticallyprovide common sense. There is of course the stereotypeof the absent-minded physics professor. More seriously,Deep Blue can't do the weekly shopping and there is nosimple way to adapt its prodigious formal intelligence tothat apparently elementary task.Traditional artificial intelligence- the science and

engineering of smart computers - has grappled withboth kinds of intelligence. Its success in formal domainshas been matched by a notable lack of success at repro-ducing common sense. The standard approach has beento attempt to translate the informal domain into anapproximately commensurate formal system. Unfortu-nately, this enterprise is extraordinarily difficult, to saythe least. There are some research projects around theworld grappling with the problem, but don't hold yourbreath.From this perspective, Deep Blue's victory does signi-

fy something important about artificial intelligence:namely that, as one expert put it, the easy (formal) partis now almost over, and the real work is just beginning.Computers are reaching superiority in a kind of intelli-gence which is rather difficult for humans to achieve.However, they are barely at first base with regard to thekind of intelligence humans fmd entirely natural - nego-tiating their way around the everyday world.

THUS FAR, I bave argued that neither the simplealarmist interpretation, nor the simple defla-tionist reaction, can be sustained. Deep Blue isnot a superhuman intellect, but neither is it just

a cash-register on steroids. It is an enormously S'Ophisti-cated machine exhibiting a significant measure of intelli-gence in one formal domain, and none in all others. Untilcomputer scientists can solve the far more difficult prob-lem of commonsense intelligence, machines will remainour intellectual inferiors and subject to our dominion.

Is this likely to happen, and if so, when? Somephil~sophers have claimed it will always be impossiblefor digital computers to exhibit any significant degree ofcommon sense. Hubert Dreyfus of the University of Cal-ifornia at Berkeley is the most important of this gr01.lp.He has provided powerful arguments that commonsense depends upon vast quantities of everyday knowl-edge and knowhow which can never be fully articulatedin a form useable by digital computers.Such predictions, however, are inherently risky, for

they depend on our current levels of understanding ofthe nature of the problem and the limits of technology.Meanwhile, many researchers are tackling variousaspects of the problem and making what counts at leastas piecemeal progress on the fringes. The most famousand ambitious of these efforts is the "CYC" project pio-neered by Doug Lenat. The goal here is to '''upload" theentirety of human commonsense knowledge into a vastelectronic encyclopedia ready for use by other pro-grams. The CYC people claim to have commercialapplicationsup and running. .

My own opinion is that researchers in artificial intel-ligence will eventually succeed in solving the problem ofc;ommonsense intelligence. It will not be anytime soon.Cracking the chess nut took about four decades longerthan originally predicted. In the meantime, we havecome to nnderstand that chess was the easy problem.Common sense may well take centuries. AIan Turing,the father of artifidal intelligence, predicted in 1950 thatby the end of the century - thar is, by around now - wewould have machines able to converse at pretty convinc-ing levels. No such luck. You can, if you like, interactover the Internet with the best "conversation" machinesin the world today. The experience is sure to impressupon you the difficulty of programming a computerwith common sense. Nevertheless, progress is beingmade. The goal - genuine intelligence on tap - is sovaluable that va~t resources and ingenuity will bethrown at it over the next few hundred years. Mymoney, fQrwhat it is worth, is on the side of the com-puter engineers.In the case of chess, truly excellent levels of play

were only achieved once scientists had developed suffi-cient understanding of how humans manage to play thegame so well, and figured out how to transfer some ofthat understanding into the computer's design. DeepBlue's intelligence was thus largely a matter of humanintelligence, abstracted out and reimplemented in digitalhardware. The same will be true in the case of commonsense. Constructing computers which hold conversa-tions will only be possible once we understand muchbetter what it is that an ordinary person knows, and .

how that knowledge is organised, accessed and updated.

.4

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point is that recognition as "one of us", with attendantrights and responsibilities, should depend not on arbi-trary details of one's history or embodiment but onone's capacity to participate in human forms of life.Taken to its logical limit, this view would extend theprivilege of human status even to suitably programmedcomputers.The philosophical choice between hardline biologism

and a more catholic liberalism is not an easy one, and Idon't intend to adjudicate the matter here. The point ofinterest is that artificially intelligent machines participat-ing in human forms of life are the kind of case whichput pressure on the seemingly simple distinctionbetween Mankind and The Machine. For most of theindustrial age, the distinction was obvious enough -people were flesh and blood, born of woman, rationaland emotional, social and spiritual. Machines weremetal and electricity, born of the workshop, cold andinsensitive. The utterly alien character of traditionalmachines made it easy to see the relationship betweenMan and Machine as one of opposition and perhapscompetition. This attitude of "us against them" is stillwith us even in the age of information technology. Thusthe Kasparov-Deep Blue match is cast as a criticalepisode in a kind of cosmic struggle to the deathbetween humanity and the machine.By the time computers have been programmed with

common sense, the contrast between Mankind andMachine will have' become blurred, if not entirely over-thrown. Computers which match our everyday forms ofintelligence, and achieve this precisely because they reca-pitulate the basic principles underlying our own intelli-gent behaviour, have become very much like us. It willnot be easy, either psychologically or philosophically, todraw a rigid distinction between people and PCs. Ofcourse, it will always be possible to maintain doggedlythat human nature is essentially a matter of lineage orembodiment, and to distribute rights and privilegesaccordingly. But as philosopher Robert Brandomremarked, "'We' is said in many ways." There is an

unavoidable element of arbitrarinessin deciding that "we" will stop at theboundary of our species. Many willchoose to draw the boundaries some-what differently, and in the processrevise the very concept of humanity.

I am suggesting that machineswill never outperform humans in ageneral intelligence contest. By thetime any such confrontation couldconceivablycome about, the concep-tual contrast between human andmachine, upon which the apparent

Once these problems in cognitive science have beensolved, the computer scientists will face the challenge ofbuilding electronic instantiations of the same principles.In other words, artificial intelligence succeeds in part

through mimicry. It produces silicon simulacra of thebasic principles underlying human intelligence. This isbecausethe fundamental requirements of intelligent per-formance are universal; what varies are their implem~n-tations in different kinds of hardware. Evolutiondeveloped in humans a neurobiological implementationof the solution to the problem of commonsense intelli-gence. Artificial intelligence will develop an alternativeimplementation of what is, at the relevant abstract level,the same solution.

SUPPOSE THIS is correct. Suppose that in fifty yearsor so computer scientistshave succeededin pro-ducing, say, an automatic personal banker.Youdial the bank on your videophoneand are con-

nectedto a virtual "talking head", a kind of super-smoothversionof the eightiestelevisioncharacterMaxHeadroom. You interact with this artificial personamuchasyouwouldwith an ordinaryhuman being.Theconversationis quite intimate;your banker has a name,a personality,and knows quite a bit about you from thebank'sfilesand your previous interactions.As long asyou don't stray too far from the world of deposits,balances and mortgages, the illusion that you areinteractingwith a flesh-and-bloodhuman will be over-whelming.Now for the crucial question - is this personal

banker human or machine? More generally, will artifi-cial intelligence be producing artificial humans, or justmachine intelligence? At one extreme is the hardlineviewthat nothing can really be human unless it isHomosapiens, that is, shares our evolutionary ancestry andour biological incarnation. According to this position,no matter how sophisticated these systems become, theywill always be mere machines, imitating but neverinstantiating human nature. At the other extreme is theultra-liberalview that membershipof 1

Homosapiensisat bestan accidentofhistory, and has no essential connec-tion to one's ontological, social andethical status as human. It took manycenturies, but in the West at least wefinally arrived at the enlightened viewthat the borders of humankind havenothing to do with those of genderand skin colour. Some people nowargue that we should extend theseborders further to include dolphinsand other putative intelligentsia. The

3 8

he marchofinfonnationtechnology will notproducemachinessuperiorto humans.Rather,it will overhaulourunderstandingofwhatweareandwhatmachinesare.

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interest of the contest-depends, will have been drastical-ly revised. Computers with common sense will not behumans, in the ordinary sense of today. Neither, howev-er, will they be machines, in the ordinary sense of today.They will be a new entrant on the ontological stage, dis-placing forever the current constellation of concepts interms of which we contemplate our pl?ce in the world.

_ The irresistibleonward march of informationtechnolo-gy will not produce machines superior to humans.Rather, it will overhaul our understandingof what weare and what machines are. It will replace a binaryopposition with a rich spectrum of manifestationsofintelligence,and a correspondinglyrich rangeof waysofdeterminingwho or what countsas one of "us".Deep Blue's victory over Kasparov was the first

major public triumph of artificial,programmed intelli-genceover evolvedbiologicalintelligence.It was indeed

an event of world-historical significance. Not, as thealarmist fears, because it signifies the arrival of alien,artificial intelligences as threats to humanity. Rather, it issignificant because it is the first major milestone in along process of transformation of human self-under-standing - and hence human being. If we see history inHegelian terms, as a series of stages in the evolution ofthe human spirit or self-consciousness, Deep Blue's vic-tory lies at the cusp of a new era. Our own mastery oftechnology and our level of scientific self-understandingare reaching the stage where we can re-create deepaspects of ourselves in non-biological form. This processwill gradually force a dramatic transformation of ourunderstanding of what we essentially are, and hence inwhat we essentially are. As Kasparov himself put it:"Maybe the highest triumph for the Creator is to see hiscreationsre-createthemselves." 0 -

Boom & GloomWho'sDoingWhattoAustralia?

byBob Browning

Economic and cultural elites are changing Australia radically.Some have never had it so good. But ordinary Australians are being required to face highunemployment, job insecurity, growing inequality, rural community decay, infrastructureand services decline, family impairment and other pressures.National pride and self esteem are under attack. Accusations of racism and populismabound in the media. -

This book examines telling extracts on key issues from policy lobbyists and leadingmedia commentators to help untangle the confusion which special interests and theirideologies impose on public understanding.

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