Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 144 When the Stars of Humanity Shine

"The world is divided into two kinds: the material world and the spiritual world."

The transmission of any idea must take into account the historical context.

Don't even talk to the people in the White House now that the world is material, because ultimately victory will come through material means. Even 60 years from now, if you tell the White House that the world is material and you want to achieve real victory rather than just a verbal one, you will still have to win through material means.

Slogans may fool some people, but your stomach doesn't lie.

To be more precise, the current White House is much more pragmatic; at least people can understand the objective existence of the material world.

At least the idea was to have Eisenhower and Nikita debate in the kitchen, to determine who wins by showcasing material abundance, rather than by shouting at newspapers and television.

"Whoever lands on the moon first will win the spiritual victory."

Whoever takes the lead in artificial intelligence first, and reaches that technological singularity first, will win in the material world.

Imagine a factory where no people are needed, machines run at full capacity automatically, cars drive on roads automatically, and goods automatically pop out of store shelves.

What Lin Ran described to them was exactly what humanity would be able to do in the near future.

Technically speaking, by 2020, it was possible to create an exhibition park that fully automates everything from production to transportation to handling using artificial intelligence technology.

The reason no one does this is because labor costs are cheaper than machines.

"In a world dominated by artificial intelligence, the Soviet Union-led coalition is still a highly command-driven world, with artificial intelligence responsible for the entire process from production and research and development to transportation."

Once they achieve these technologies, can the free world still win?
When East Germans could obtain large quantities of supplies without working, would they still travel from East Berlin to West Berlin?

Instead, people in West Berlin should be heading to East Berlin.

I am talking about something that will happen in the distant future, but do you think that after we landed on the moon in the 60s, the Soviet Union would have given up?
The failure of the spiritual world is only temporary; its impact will gradually weaken. The failure of the material world, however, is fatal.

The more you look at history, the more you realize that from World War II to the Cold War, in addition to the bipolar confrontation, there is another main axis hidden beneath the surface.

That is, the Western world, which was dominated by industrial capital, has become the Western world dominated by financial capital.

The container revolution will accelerate this process, as will computer technology derived from artificial intelligence.

The White House bureaucrats were very interested in what Lin Ran said, and after listening carefully, they agreed with his point of view.

But it's not enough.

Starting from day one in 1963, the White House recruited a group of experts and scholars in the field of artificial intelligence from all over America, including industry veterans from IBM, Texas Instruments, and Fairchild Semiconductor.

The meeting venue was changed from the relatively small Oval Office (75.8 square meters) in the White House to the large conference room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the west side of the White House.

"Should we invite John McCarthy?" The White House bureaucracy planned to notify everyone one by one, based on a list provided by the Department of Defense.

Artificial intelligence was not a new concept in the 60s.

Leaving aside the fact that the concept of artificial intelligence was first proposed at the Dartmouth Conference in 1956, and that the exploration of whether machines could simulate artificial intelligence, the American Department of Defense also launched a program called ARPA in 1958, which aimed to sponsor breakthrough technologies that went beyond the limitations of traditional military research and development, and were not limited to short-term applications.

One of the key areas sponsored by ARPA is artificial intelligence.

Therefore, the White House needs to rely on the Department of Defense to provide a list, and then they search for people based on the list.

The John McCarthy mentioned here is not the McCarthy of politics, but a computer scientist.

The White House hesitated because McCarthy's background was not good. He received a Soviet education from a young age, speaks fluent Russian, and his parents were active communists in the 30s.

His parents were like that, and he himself was similar, having traveled to Soviet Russia many times to make friends with Russian scientists.

If it weren't for this background, given McCarthy's background, he could have easily worked directly for the Department of Defense instead of remaining in academia.

One of ARPA's most important early projects in the field of artificial intelligence was language translation. They hoped to use computers to translate Russian into English to simplify the acquisition of Soviet intelligence.

At that time, John McCarthy, whose research project involved the development of the LISP language and the theoretical research of artificial intelligence, was a perfect fit for ARPA, but his background prevented him from obtaining advanced security clearance from the Department of Defense.

At this point, as the White House was preparing to convene a meeting with experts, McCarthy's background made the staff hesitate again.

They certainly didn't dare to approach John McCarthy. White House staff worried that if they did, the contents of a White House meeting would end up in the Kremlin.

In particular, professors have now elevated artificial intelligence to the level of being a key factor in the Cold War.

We're all just working people, and nobody dares to make such a decision.

“I’ll go and ask Mr. O’Donnell.”

O'Donnell is the White House Chief of Staff.

Finally, the matter was reported up the chain of command, all the way to Lyndon Johnson, who then made the final decision to summon John McCarthy.

John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky boarded a flight arranged for them by the White House.

Marvin Minsky is also an expert in the field of artificial intelligence, and the Dartmouth Conference was organized by the two of them.

McCarthy and Minsky both worked at MIT. At this time, Minsky was still at MIT, while McCarthy had already gone to Stanford as a full professor.

It was because of the holiday that he returned to MIT.

Compared to McCarthy, whose ingredients weren't so good, Minsky's ingredients were much better. But they weren't exactly good either.

He was Jewish, and his mother was a veteran Zionist activist.

In short, during that era, America's top scientists were either Zionists, pro-Russians, or German Nazi.

People of Chinese descent like Lin Ran, who come from "clean" backgrounds, are considered rare and good people.

America's investigation into Lin Ran has never stopped, and they have indeed found no evidence that he came to New York from another city after he became an adult.

It was as if the other party had appeared out of thin air in New York.

With Siegel and Horkheimer endorsing her, America's side had no choice but to believe that she was a once-in-a-millennium talent cultivated by the Göttingen School of European Studies.

Of course, some people don't believe it, but the problem is that you can't find any other clues to prove that his background is problematic.

A blank space plus endorsement from a big shot is the best protective shield.

The Göttingen School and the Frankfurt School were two prestigious institutions in this era.

"The professor really knows how to stir things up." Minsky waved the newspaper in his hand, which featured the big "technological singularity" that had become a topic of discussion across the United States.

McCarthy said with a wry smile, "Who would have thought that someone would be able to create an artificial intelligence machine capable of defeating human chess players so quickly?"

"No wonder he's a professor."

Both were PhDs in mathematics from Princeton. Minsky studied applied mathematics and his dissertation was on neural networks, while McCarthy had a PhD in pure mathematics and his work was on partial differential equations.

At that time, Minsky designed a neural network structure model, which included input units, processing units, and output units, and the connection strength in the network would change according to external feedback.

It even includes the system adjusting its behavior through reward and punishment signals. A stochastic process is also introduced to ensure the randomness of this model.

This is also the foundation of future artificial intelligence neural networks, and it is a pioneering work.

As the originator of the concept of artificial intelligence, I was excited after seeing the Deep Blue report, even though I was initially skeptical of IBM.

After all, this company has made too many unrealistic promises in order to sell computers and get budgets from the Department of Defense.

But seeing IBM holding exhibitions and opening them to the public, coupled with Lin Ran's endorsement, they saw a glimmer of hope that artificial intelligence could be realized in their lifetime.

"This time, the discussion should focus on artificial intelligence."

"If artificial intelligence truly is the key to victory, then AI research will definitely need substantial budgetary support," John McCarthy said. "This is fantastic news for the development of AI."

Upon arriving in Washington, D.C., as they expected, the large conference room was filled with experts and business executives. Apart from the White House bureaucrats sitting on the stage, almost all the faces in the audience were familiar.

After all, there are very few scholars working on artificial intelligence in this era.

"Welcome to all the experts in the field of artificial intelligence. The White House hopes to hear your opinions on artificial intelligence technology as much as possible."

Director Lin proposed the concept of a technological singularity in relation to artificial intelligence, arguing that its arrival will fundamentally alter the existing structure of human society. Research and development is only one aspect of its potential impact; from industrial production to freight transportation, it can completely replace humans.

Whoever reaches the technological singularity first will gain an unparalleled advantage over those who follow.

I hope everyone will feel free to express their opinions on this point.

John McCarthy looked around. The people he knew were experts in artificial intelligence or computer-related fields, while the strangers were either corporate executives or White House bureaucrats.

He couldn't help but marvel at Lin Ran's influence.

A few casual words were enough to get so many people to come to the White House for a meeting.

When John von Neumann, as a member of the Atomic Energy Commission, was diagnosed with cancer and was being treated at Walter Liddell Military Medical Center in Washington, America's Secretary of Defense, along with the Chiefs of Staff of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, gathered in his hospital room for a meeting.

McCarthy believed that Lin Ran's status and influence were comparable to those of Professor von Neumann.

"Professor, I am Jack Ruiner, the director of ARPA at the Department of Defense. I went to New York yesterday to visit Deep Blue before coming to Washington. When I visited, its win rate was 70%."

That's already very high for a machine.

Jack Ruiner, of Polish descent, holds a PhD in electrical engineering, though he has not achieved much academic success.

During his tenure, he increased ARPA's budget from $1.6 million to $2.5 million, and most of the increased budget went to the Office of Information Technology, which he spearheaded.

It can be said that he is a supporter of Lin Rantian.

"Moreover, it is completely different from the technology that IBM showed us at Georgetown Labs in the past. It relies entirely on the machine to perform rule-based calculations on its own."

However, its essence is still a rule-based calculation, only it transforms the manually defined encoding rules and small vocabularies into pre-defined rules and encoding tables.

This makes me wonder if the artificial intelligence you're talking about can really be achieved?
We all know there's a gap between what seems achievable and what's theoretically achievable, and an even bigger gap between what's theoretically achievable and what's actually achievable.

How can you guarantee that we can actually achieve that seemingly wonderful technological singularity?

As one of ARPA's rare, highly trained academic bureaucrats, Jack Ruiner's questions were very insightful.

Actually, the blame should still be placed on IBM.

IBM fooled the Department of Defense to get subsidies and projects.

Take the Georgetown lab he mentioned as an example.

America wants to achieve rapid translation between Russian and English, and she wants to do this using computers.

Then IBM said it could do it, and in 1954, on January 7th, they invited Department of Defense officials and journalists from all walks of life to their headquarters in New York for a demonstration.

Using an IBM 701 computer, 61 short Russian sentences were automatically translated into English, which caused a great sensation at the time.

Although it received limited media coverage, it had a real impact within the military by providing substantial research funding to IBM's Georgetown Lab.

But every time I ask, the progress is great, but the actual results are very average.

The machine translation developed jointly by IBM and Georgetown has remained at a very rudimentary level.

Three years later, the newly established Advisory Committee on Automatic Language Processing discovered that the Georgetown IBM project was far from meeting expectations, and the entire project budget had been slashed to almost nothing.

However, the military's patience with Georgetown and his team is dwindling rapidly, directly reflected in Jack Ruiner's hostility towards IBM.

Lin Ran explained, "We can use existing mathematical tools to build a theoretical framework to prove that the technological singularity brought about by artificial intelligence is theoretically achievable."

We define the level of technology as a function that increases with time t.

Lin Ran took out the mathematical model of the future technological singularity, and after speaking, he continued, "I think this only proves that it is possible from a mathematical perspective."

Just now, Director Ruina mentioned the machine translation project that IBM and Georgetown were working on together.

They are progressing slowly because they are all useless.

Their focus is on the rules, but with current technology, it's entirely possible to achieve far better results than it did ten years ago.

"In just two months, with my remote guidance, their results will be dramatically different."

After Lin Ran finished speaking, IBM CEO Watson, who was sitting in the audience, said directly, "IBM will do its best to cooperate with the professor."

"I'm really looking forward to the translation machine after the professor personally guides us," said Defense Secretary McNamara, who was sitting next to Lin Ran.

Lin Ran continued, "Artificial intelligence is composed of three parts: machines, algorithms, and learning content."

A machine's computing power determines its level of intelligence.

The increased computing power of IBM's mainframe computers enabled them to solve more complex problems.

The algorithm determines how much power it can exert.

The final learning content determines its level of wisdom.

Artificial intelligence must be similar to humans.

A person's level of intelligence depends on their education, IQ, and experience.

Intelligence quotient corresponds to algorithms, including innate or genetically determined abilities such as logical reasoning, problem-solving, memory, and language comprehension.

Education is the knowledge, skills, and ways of thinking that humans acquire through systematic learning. It is similar to the capabilities of machines in artificial intelligence, where the computing power of machines provides support for the realization of intelligence.

Experience is data.

In the Georgetown project, they used an IBM 701 machine, a purely rule-based algorithm, and a corpus of Russian and English sentences.

Upgrading from an IBM 701 to IBM's latest machine, enriching the corpus, and optimizing the algorithm will naturally result in much better performance.

Anyone in the Department of Defense who knows about the Georgetown project will question Lin Ran's concept of a technological singularity.

Because they felt it was unrealistic.

What Lin Ran has to do is face this criticism head-on.

Having decided to burn through the bottomless pit of artificial intelligence with the US budget, Lin Ran had already made ample preparations.

I'm afraid you won't mention the Georgetown project.

Fortunately, there was a straight man in the audience.

Lin Ran's desired effect was to make everyone present realize that artificial intelligence, under his leadership, was entirely achievable.

"Professor, I agree with your point of view."

The human brain has 10 to the power of 11 neurons. When the number of transistors in a machine reaches this level, it is entirely possible for us to enable machines to achieve the same thinking ability as humans.

"But I also have questions," Marvin Minsky said. "The neurons in the brain process both analog and discrete signals, while transistors and vacuum tubes can only process 0 or 1 electronic signals; it's a discrete electronic signal."

Even AI experts today doubt whether machines can truly reach the same level as humans.

"Transistors can also process continuous analog signals."

Moreover, IBM only took eight years to evolve its computing power from 2000 operations per second to 10 operations per second, from the 701 to the 7090.

We don't necessarily need to develop a brain exactly like the human brain; it will gradually become a tool for humans, which is also a kind of technological singularity.

However, this kind of technological singularity does not have as great an impact as a true technological singularity.

From being used only for mathematical calculations, to machine translation, and now to defeating human chess players, the speed of machine progress far exceeds our comprehension.

The meeting, which lasted for two weeks at the White House, is now considered a foundational conference for artificial intelligence.

Although America's establishment of an artificial intelligence committee and the allocation of funds to AI-related companies and research institutions will not be available until the new Georgetown Translator is unveiled, the January meeting is still regarded as a foundational ceremony for artificial intelligence.

As for why, although artificial intelligence was founded in America, China ultimately achieved the technological singularity, that's another story.

(End of this chapter)