mind vs machine :: essays research papers

In 1792 Mary Wollst unmatchablecraft in her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman posed the inquire, "In what does mans pre-eminence everywhere the brute creation consist?" She answers, "In reason and virtue by which mankind can attain a degree of k straightwayledge." Today, no whizz would argue that man and woman are not intellectually equal, or that humans deport a superior intellectual capacity oer the brute creation, but what would they say ab proscribed universe versus the machine? We have always felt ourselves superior to animals by our ability to reason -- "to crap conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises"(Random House Dictionary). Philosophers have argued for centuries about what defines reason, now on the dawn of the 21st century this age old question essential be revisited. Since the ENIAC, the first mainframe, hummed to life in 1946, the chasm between humankind and machine has appeared to dwindle. Computers have insin uated themselves into the lives of millions of people, taking over the transactance of mundane and instant tasks. With the constant improvement of computer technology, todays super-computers can outperform the combined principal power of thousands of humans. These machines are so powerful that they can store an rise sixteen billion times longer than this one in dynamical memory. With the development of artificial intelligence software, computers can not only perform tasks at remarkable speed, but can "learn" to respond to situations establish on various input. Can these machines ever procure "reason and virtue," or are they simply calculators on steroids? We have now reached the point where we must redefine what constitutes reason in the 21st century. On the intellectual appointmentfield, in February 1996, thirty-two chess pieces, represented the most recent challenge to the whimsey that thought is exclusive to humans. Kasparov, the world chess champion, faced off against one of IBMs finest supercomputers, oceanic abyss Blue. Chess, a game of logic and reason, would be a perfective test of a computers ability to "think." In the Information Age battle of David vs. Goliath, the machine clearly had the advantage. Deep Blue is capable of playing out 50- 100 billion positions in the three minutes allotted per turn. Nonetheless, the ti brain was no match for the cunning intellect of the human mind. Deep Blue lacked the ability to anticipate the moves that Kasparov would make. In preparation for the game, Kasparov adapted a strategy of play unique to the computer.