The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn

by Richard Hamming

The situation with respect to computers and thought is awkward. We would like to believe, and at the same time not believe, machines can “think.” We want to believe because machines could then help us so much in our mental world; we want to not believe to preserve our feeling of self-importance. The machines can defeat us in so many ways—speed, accuracy, reliability, cost, rapidity of control, freedom from boredom, bandwidth in and out, ease of forgetting old and learning new things, hostile environments, and personnel problems—that we would like to feel superior in some way to them; they are, after all, our own creations! For example, if machine programs could do a significantly better job than the current crop of doctors, where would that leave them? And by extension where would we be left?