《Artifice and Intelligence》作者： - Tim Pratt【EPUB】

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Artifice and IntelligenceBy Tim Pratt illustration by Mack Sztaba6 August 2007While his former colleagues laboring on the Brain Project concentrated on the generally-accepted pathsto artificial intelligence—Bayesian networks machine learning data mining fuzzy systems case-basedreasoning—Edgar Adleman despondent and disgraced turned to the dark arts and summoned a realghost for his machine.The first ghost he lured into his coil of blown glass and copper wire and delicate platinum gears was somesort of warrior from a marauding Asian tribe extinct for centuries. Edgar grew tired of the ghostscreeching epithets in a dead language and cut the power then sat under the cramped eaves of hisattic—he was no longer allowed into the government AI labs—and pondered. The proof of concept wassolid. He could create a convincing imitation of an artificial intelligence. With access to the sum of humanknowledge online and freedom from bodily concerns Edgar believed a ghost-driven AI could operateon the same level as a real machine intelligence. No one had to know it was a ghost except for the veryhighest of the higher-ups in the government and they wouldnt care as long as the ghost was convincingenough to negotiate with the Indian AI. Which meant Edgar needed to summon and snare the ghost of agreat negotiator or a great actor or both.Edgar went to the pet store and bought a dozen more white mice. He hated sacrificing them in theghost-calling ritual—they were cute with their wiggly noses and tiny eyes—but he consoled himself thatthey would have become python food anyway. At least this way their deaths would help nationalsecurity.Pramesh sat in an executive chair deep in the underground bunker beneath Auroville in southern Indiaand longed for a keyboard and a tractable problem to solve for lines of code to create or untangle. Hewas a game designer a geek in the service of art and entertainment and he should be working onnext-generation