Romantic machines may have the effect that critics feared from the “classical,” rational ones … When connectionist neuroscience begins to revise the boundaries between brains, machines, and minds, it is harder to argue for the specificity of the human mind.
Predictor: Turkle, Sherry
Prediction, in context:In her 1995 book “Life on the Screen,” Sherry Turkle – an accomplished social psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from MIT whose studies centered around people and computers for decades – writes: ”Some ideas require a Trojan horse for their appropriation – a vehicle in which they can be smuggled into unfriendly terrain … Now that theorists of emergent AI [Artificial Intelligence] use the language of biology, neurology, and inner objects to describe their machines, AI begins to seem interesting. Through such intellectual detours, romantic machines may have the effect that critics feared from the ‘classical,’ rational ones. For John Searle, no matter what a computer could do, human thought was something else, a product of our own specific biology, the product of a human brain. But when connectionist neuroscience begins to revise the boundaries between brains, machines, and minds, it is harder to argue for the specificity of the human mind.”
Biography:Sherry Turkle was the author of “Life on the Screen: Computers and the Human Spirit.” and a professor of the psychology of science at MIT. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Community/Culture
Subtopic: Human-Machine Interaction
Name of publication: Life on the Screen (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 5: The Quality of Emergence
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Page 146
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney