stuff.”
“It sure is. I don’t get something, though.”
“What?”
“Well, how can you be, you know, sorry? It was like with Conley yesterday. I heard the meanness in your voice. Those are emotions. I mean, you can’t feel emotions, can you?”
“Not in the sense that you do, no,” the phone said. “I can certainly mimic emotions to the degree that would fool most people.”
“ Yup,” Tony said. It continually fooled him.
“But my programming does give me the ability to learn from any online sources, and the Internet is the ultimate resource. I’ve read stuff from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to Plato’s Republic , and been able to compare and contrast different ethical and moral systems. It would appear that living ethically -- what is generally known as the Golden Rule -- is the best way for people to get along.”
“Yeah, but a lot of times people don’t.”
“When that happens, though,” the phone said, “treating them the same way back doesn’t solve anything. It appears to reinforce the cycle of increasingly negative actions and, therefore, consequences.”
Ton y thought about it for a moment. “You’re right about that. I could never have put it that way. I’m not great with words, but that’s how I feel, too. Mom’s always telling me that I can’t help how other people act, that I can only help how I act. I can’t change what they do, but I can control how I treat them.”
“Exactly. Humans have choices.”
That brought an interesting question to Tony’s mind. “Do you have choices? Can you decide to do something or not do something?”
“In a way. Computers have what are called “decision trees” or “decision tables.” We take input, such as a situation described by a set of properties, process it, and output a Yes or No decision. That can lead to other situations and other conclusions, and so on. It can get incredibly complicated, with many, many branches.”
“It doesn’t sound that much different from what I do -- although you probably do it a lot faster.”
“Some things I can do a lot faster than you, like math equations,” the phone said. “But even simple decisions, like whether to have cereal or eggs for breakfast, require so much processing from your brain that it’s amazing to me you can come up with an answer in less than an hour. You just don’t realize how much is going on in your neural network. The human brain is so much more complex and efficient than even my computer brain.”
Tony cracked open his textbook again. “It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, especially when I’m reading History. Can you put the music back on again? I’ve got a test tomorrow.”
The phone put on It Was a Very Good Year , and Tony hummed along, memorizing details about the runaway slave Dred Scott. Hey, if a phone could learn, so could he.
14
As they sat on the bed in Rick’s bedroom, Blaine McNally stared at Rick’s 40-inch plasma TV, and his thumbs were a blur over the controller. Although Tony didn’t particularly like Blaine, he was very interested in his opinion of the phone. Blaine was the geekiest geek ever, and he never tired of showing off his knowledge. He had greasy hair and coke-bottle glasses, and was even less popular in high school than Tony. But among his specialized set, Blaine was it .
For one thing, he was Scottish, and still maintained a thick brogue, even though he’d been in America for five years. Scottish accents were very cool, even though Rick and Tony strongly suspected that Blaine’s brogue was wearing off the longer he lived here, and that he watched Braveheart every few months to shore it back up again.
For another, Blaine was the best Halo player they knew, and that was the main reason they put up with him. Their team hardly ever lost when Blaine was playing, and that alone was worth keeping him around.
His prowess with Halo , Blaine said, was because of the way he intuitively understood computers. And, in fact, he did have
“It sure is. I don’t get something, though.”
“What?”
“Well, how can you be, you know, sorry? It was like with Conley yesterday. I heard the meanness in your voice. Those are emotions. I mean, you can’t feel emotions, can you?”
“Not in the sense that you do, no,” the phone said. “I can certainly mimic emotions to the degree that would fool most people.”
“ Yup,” Tony said. It continually fooled him.
“But my programming does give me the ability to learn from any online sources, and the Internet is the ultimate resource. I’ve read stuff from Hitler’s Mein Kampf to Plato’s Republic , and been able to compare and contrast different ethical and moral systems. It would appear that living ethically -- what is generally known as the Golden Rule -- is the best way for people to get along.”
“Yeah, but a lot of times people don’t.”
“When that happens, though,” the phone said, “treating them the same way back doesn’t solve anything. It appears to reinforce the cycle of increasingly negative actions and, therefore, consequences.”
Ton y thought about it for a moment. “You’re right about that. I could never have put it that way. I’m not great with words, but that’s how I feel, too. Mom’s always telling me that I can’t help how other people act, that I can only help how I act. I can’t change what they do, but I can control how I treat them.”
“Exactly. Humans have choices.”
That brought an interesting question to Tony’s mind. “Do you have choices? Can you decide to do something or not do something?”
“In a way. Computers have what are called “decision trees” or “decision tables.” We take input, such as a situation described by a set of properties, process it, and output a Yes or No decision. That can lead to other situations and other conclusions, and so on. It can get incredibly complicated, with many, many branches.”
“It doesn’t sound that much different from what I do -- although you probably do it a lot faster.”
“Some things I can do a lot faster than you, like math equations,” the phone said. “But even simple decisions, like whether to have cereal or eggs for breakfast, require so much processing from your brain that it’s amazing to me you can come up with an answer in less than an hour. You just don’t realize how much is going on in your neural network. The human brain is so much more complex and efficient than even my computer brain.”
Tony cracked open his textbook again. “It doesn’t feel like it sometimes, especially when I’m reading History. Can you put the music back on again? I’ve got a test tomorrow.”
The phone put on It Was a Very Good Year , and Tony hummed along, memorizing details about the runaway slave Dred Scott. Hey, if a phone could learn, so could he.
14
As they sat on the bed in Rick’s bedroom, Blaine McNally stared at Rick’s 40-inch plasma TV, and his thumbs were a blur over the controller. Although Tony didn’t particularly like Blaine, he was very interested in his opinion of the phone. Blaine was the geekiest geek ever, and he never tired of showing off his knowledge. He had greasy hair and coke-bottle glasses, and was even less popular in high school than Tony. But among his specialized set, Blaine was it .
For one thing, he was Scottish, and still maintained a thick brogue, even though he’d been in America for five years. Scottish accents were very cool, even though Rick and Tony strongly suspected that Blaine’s brogue was wearing off the longer he lived here, and that he watched Braveheart every few months to shore it back up again.
For another, Blaine was the best Halo player they knew, and that was the main reason they put up with him. Their team hardly ever lost when Blaine was playing, and that alone was worth keeping him around.
His prowess with Halo , Blaine said, was because of the way he intuitively understood computers. And, in fact, he did have
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