At last she had spoken. Her voice was still uncertain, but without a doubt she had now cast off her SIREN’S tail. And she’d managed to surprise me with this disquisition extracted from the BIBLIOSPHERE. She knew I would appreciate the care with which she had selected it, the fact that it was by Proust, of whom I’d spoken so frequently. Immediately I remembered that one of KLIMT’S redheaded models was called Albertine (like Proust’s heroine). And delighted by the happy coincidence and because at that moment I saw the waiter approaching from the back of the café with our frozen concoctions, I shouted out in jubilation, “VANILLA ICE.” (Which also happened to be the name of one of my favorite singers that year.)
The waiter was carrying the tray at a dangerous angle, though the glass dishes remained glued to its mirrored surface as if by some prodigy. I intuited that the inclination the waiter was imparting to the tray as he walked between the tables was inversely proportionate to the weight of the cups it bore, and that the waiter’s brain was working like a well-oiled machine, in full mastery of his corporeal organization: the second-to-second disposition of his arm with the napkin draped over it, the suction pads of his right hand that gripped the tray so firmly, and his head which, a moment before the daring spin, announced the angle that both the tray and his torso would assume. Skills, wiles, acquired over years of intense rowing across the sea of clients, yet of which his waiter brain had not the slightest awareness. LINDA, to my astonishment, had given signs of possessing a more refined mechanism, capable of registering concepts, whole passages, such as the one she had just declaimed. I had tried to provide her with a guide to this apprenticeship, one of such logical force and powerful conviction that it would render the truth of frivolity irresistible, mathematically deducible, without need of any act of faith. Now I was ready to put her to the test, determine the degree of humanity that LINDA had achieved after three weeks of intense apprenticeship, attempt an operational definition of her intelligence (or humanity).
(In “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” A. M. Turing proposes the following: [T]he “imitation game”. . is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. It is A’s object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as “I am the woman, don’t listen to him!” to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks. We now ask the question, “What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?” Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, “Can machines think?”I believe that in about fifty years’ time it will be possible to program computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70 percent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.
Which is to say: [This game] is played with three [participants], [the machine] (A), [a human] (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game is for the interrogator to determine which of the other two is the [human] and which is the [machine]. . . It is A’s object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification [so A, naturally, will answer without any kind of limitation]. . . In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. [. .] The best strategy for B is . . to give truthful answers. . . [If] an average interrogator will not have more than 70 percent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning [most people will agree that the machine has demonstrated intelligent conduct].
Had she shed her SIREN’S tail? How stable was she on her new legs? Was she ready for the CATWALK? Was it Anastasia or LINDA standing before me, her memory cells full of newly renovated information?
VASARI. The existence of important galleries of art in the Grand Duchy of Muscovy conditions the appearance of a certain sort of perfectly mimetic being: girls with an intellectual air about them, glasses, stockings that end above the knee, a slim portfolio clutched against the bosom as if replete with poetical compositions. During one whole summer I was intrigued by the frequent appearance of a woman beneath my window who would walk past with all the imposing presence of a condottiere depicted in oil paint. It took me two months to identify her as a fruit seller at a nearby bazaar, a coarse and ill-tempered creature. On another occasion I found myself in the cafeteria of a large research institution and noticed, among the members of the public present there alongside me, a gentleman with just the sort of precisely trimmed beard that is worn by a physicist who does top-secret research (atomic bombs, military lasers). The movement of his right hand through the air resolved all questions with academic exactitude, giving particular emphasis to certain phrases. I imagined: “The half-life of U-235 worries me,” or “We must use the positron accelerator to bombard the nucleus with gamma particles.” When I walked past him on my way out the door, I heard him confess the truth: “I’m telling you one more time: no yeast at all! None! A ten-liter demijohn, some cherries, and some sugar. That’s it!” Later I often saw him in a neighboring bar tossing back glasses of cheap rosé, gripped with the firm hand of the lathe operator that he was.
I. The organizing eye. (In the Confessions of Saint Augustine [Book X], this important clarification: Ad oculos enim proprie videre pertinet, utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus, cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus. Neque enim dicimus, ‘audi quid rutilet,’ aut, ‘olefac quam niteat,’ aut, ‘gusta quam splendeat,’ aut, ‘palpa quam fulgeat’: videri enim dicuntur haec omnia. Dicimus autem non solum, ‘vide quid luceat,’ quod soli oculi sentire possunt, sed etiam, `vide quid sonet,’ ‘vide quid oleat,’ ‘vide quid sapiat,’ ‘vide quam durum sit.’ Ideoque generalis experientia sensuum concupiscentia (sicut dictum est) oculorum vocatur, quia videndi officium, in quo primatum oculi tenent, etiam ceteri sensus sibi de similitudine usurpant, cum aliquid cognitionis explorant.For seeing belongeth properly to the eyes; yet we apply this word to the other senses also, when we exercise them in the search after knowledge. For we do not say, “listen how it glows,” “smell how it glistens,” “taste how it shines,” or “feel how it flashes,” since all of these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, “see how it shineth,” which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, “see how it soundeth,” “see how it smelleth,” “see how it tasteth,” “see how hard it is.” And thus the general experience of the senses, as was said before, is termed “the lust of the eyes,” because the function of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the preeminence, the other senses by way of similitude take possession of, whensoever they seek out any knowledge. — Translated by Edward Bouverie Pusey.)