Remember Watson? IBM supercomputer Watson took down two accomplished human competitors in the trivia game show Jeopardy!, a test of wit, processing speed, and breadth of knowledge. One small loss for what human Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings called the “puny human brain,” but one giant leap for computers toward the inevitable technological takeover of everything, rendering the human being the inadequate, unfortunate, biological little brother.
Watson came prepared with millions of downloaded resources including the entire Wikipedia, the entire Worldbook Encyclopedia, and the entire Internet Movie Database. The computer instantly accesses and analyzes its vast resources, pinpoints one answer out of God-knows-how-many potential answers, and determines a confidence percentage for the correct answer before he buzzes in. If Watson knows the answer, he usually buzzes in first—all this is done in fractions of fractions of seconds.
Our human brain operates on a similar basis. Like Watson, we have downloaded millions of resources, from learning the ABC’s in kindergarten, to reading novels in high school, to watching specials on the History Channel, to listening to the news, to having conversations with friends. We constantly consolidate and update information. When asked a question, like a trivia question, we search through our vast memory resources to pinpoint the correct answer and simultaneously determine if we have enough confidence in this answer to say it out loud, or to buzz in. All this happens very quickly, as demonstrated when human Jeopardy! contestants often buzz in immediately after the question finishes.
In essence, the IBM scientists created a machine to do what we already do, but to do it with significantly more resources, more precise confidence analysis, and without the various cognitive slip-ups (like the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon) made by human brains. Head researcher David Ferrucci explained that although the team did not construct Watson based on the human mind, several algorithms were inspired by human problem solving. Through years of trial and error the team produced an analytical giant capable of answering an array of often nuanced Jeapordy! questions. As the final tally confirmed, the mechanized mind overpowers the most competent human opponents.
Bigger. Faster. More accurate. It seems that computers are primed to further supplant human tasks. What’s left for the human mind?
I thought about this recently while sitting in a book store reading Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, a wildly creative mind with a gift for story making. For two hours I read, thought, people watched. One time I looked up from my book to ponder an occurrence in the story, and found myself looking across the bookstore at all those books. I could never possibly have the time to read all of them, but what if I could somehow get all of that stuff into my mind without taking the time to read? Reading seems terribly inefficient…word by word, line by line, downloading information, most of it to be lost forever.
Then something happened to me that has never happened to a computer: a thought occurred. I realized something. I had an insight. I realized that when I read, I am doing something holy, something that transcends raw data intake. I experience the words on the page. I am affected by the words on the page, depending on my current mood, my relationships, my memories– all of my mental qualities influence this experience.
And the writers of the books! They have different ways of expressing ideas that are unique to their environmental history and genetic makeup, which might affect me in way different from another author expressing the same idea.
When I read I am not downloading information. I don’t do it instantly and I don’t want to. I am experiencing a vast series of human interactions, in real time, and this changes me. I have the opportunity to reflect on a sentence, remember a story from my childhood that in turn reminds me of a conversation with a student, and thus realize a better way to approach my class. I can read a line, maybe a line I have read a million times, and suddenly experience a unique insight into self, God, the world, or a problem.
The human mind doesn’t remember everything. This is a blessing. Our brains unconsciously sift and sort information in ways that influence our unique personhood. We can imagine, we can be stirred, we can be shocked, we can be horrified, we can be sad, we can be elated, we can be relieved, we can be content. We are alive.
What happens in the human brain, although mechanical if analyzed piecemeal, transcends the mechanics of its functioning to produce mind, and in a deeper sense to produce soul. Our biological functions allow us to not simply exchange information with each other but to connect and understand each other. Ultimately, they allow us to love each other.
Watson-like technology prepares now, according to IBM visionaries, to take over formerly error prone human endeavors in health care and business. Beside a doctor, Watson the physician’s assistant could access volumes of updated medical research while keeping in mind the patient’s personal medical history to create diagnostic and treatment evaluations. In the boardroom, Watson the business analyst will tell the CEO what can be cut from the budget to maximize efficiency.
IBM representative Kerrie Hollie, in a TED panel discussion about these future possibilities, detailed the questions a business man might ask the computer: would I be best to cut this program or that marketing strategy…? Afterward, host Stephen Baker cracked a joke, “or do I cut the people who are answering the questions you’re asking Watson?” Everyone on the panel shared a laugh.
These propositions conjure up memories of Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, which enters a technologically driven world that runs efficiently enough without human beings poking around. The human beings are mostly out of work, with the cream of the logical-mathematical crop competing for upper-level engineering and management opportunities. The novel is aptly named for the mechanized piano that plays itself. What will human beings do, when everything we did is done better by the machines we created? Theoretically we will kick back and smell the roses, but money makes the world go ‘round and no one gets paid for kicking back smelling roses.
In Player Piano, the protagonist finds himself leading an underground society with aims to destroy the mechanized instruments. The “Ghost Shirt Society” imagines a world removed of most technology, where everyone walks everywhere, uses wood fire to cook their food and light their homes, and reads books instead of watching television. They aim to “rediscover the two greatest wonders of the world, the human mind and hand.” The group wreaks havoc late in the book, leaving many machines smashed and smoking. But after this moral victory, they concede that “this is like the Indians’ massacre of Custer and his men. The Little Bighorn. One isolated victory against an irresistible tide. More and more whites where Custer came from; more and more machines where these came from.”
I can’t predict the future and I can’t dream up scenarios like Kurt Vonnegut can, but I hesitate to accept this barrage of technology (Typed on a computer while intermittently browsing the internet, glancing at the television, and checking my phone for messages…sigh…)
I guess I can only make a plea.
Human innovations are advancing machines in ways previously fathomable only by science-fiction minds. Technology will continue to revolutionize the way we work and how we communicate with each other, as it has since the invention of the cotton gin and the telegram (hell, since the invention of stone tools and writing). If a threshold exists, past which further technological advancements hinder our capacity for self-actualization, we’re there. I am reminded of this every time I walk into a room unacknowledged by people lost in headphones, ipads, smartphones, or laptops. Since technology will only progress, we need to be intentional in how we use our machines. Humans still hold the biological ability for emotion, creativity, imagination, beauty, appreciation of life, love; let’s build a world to capture these things. Let’s use technology to accentuate humanity, not replace it.