Ender's Shadow (Shadow, #1)

by Orson Scott Card

have to decide whether I can put Achilles into Battle School while Bean is there, or give up one of them in order to keep the other. Now, from Bean’s response to Achilles’ face, what counsel can you give me.” “You won’t like it.” “Try me.” “From that incident, we can tell you that putting them together will be either a really really bad thing, or—” “I’m going to have to take a long, hard look at your budget.” “Sir, the whole purpose of the program, the way it works, is that the computer makes connections we would never think of, and gets responses we weren’t looking for. It’s not actually under our control.” “Just because a program isn’t out of control doesn’t mean intelligence is present, either in the program or the programmer.” “We don’t use the word ‘intelligence’ with software. We regard that as a naive idea. We say that it’s ‘complex.’ Which means that we don’t always understand what it’s doing. We don’t always get conclusive information.” “Have you ever gotten conclusive information about anything?” “I chose the wrong word this time. ‘Conclusive’ isn’t ever the goal when we are studying the human mind.” “Try ‘useful.’ Anything useful?” “Sir, I’ve told you what we know. The decision was yours before we reported to you, and it’s still your decision now. Use our information or not, but is it sensible to shoot the messenger?” “When the messenger won’t tell you what the hell the message is, my trigger finger gets twitchy. Dismissed.”