112 PHYSICS QF THE IMPOSSIBLE
aware of all of the ins and outs of our brain's recognizing the ground,
the sky, the trees, the rocks, and so forth.
In other words, the way our brain works can be compared to a
huge iceberg. We are aware of only the tip of the iceberg, the conscious
mind. But lurking below the surface, hidden from view, is a much
larger object, the unconscious mind, which consumes vast amounts of
the brain's "computer power" to understand simple things surrounding it, such as figuring out where you are, whom you are talking to,
and what lies around you. All this is done automatically without our
permission or knowledge.
This is the reason that robots cannot navigate across a room, read
handwriting, drive trucks and cars, pick up garbage, and so forth. The
U.S. military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop mechanical soldiers and intelligent trucks, without success.
Scientists began to realize that playing chess or multiplying huge
numbers required only a tiny, narrow sliver of human intelligence.
When the IBM computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry
Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997, it was a victory of raw computer
power, but the experiment told us nothing about intelligence or consciousness, although the game made plenty of headlines. As Douglas
Hofstadter, a computer scientist at Indiana University, said, "My God, I
used to think chess required thought Now, I realize it doesn't. It doesn't
mean Kasparov isn't a deep thinker, just that you can bypass deep thinking in playing chess, the way you can fly without flapping your wings."
(Developments in computers will also have an enormous impact
on the future of the job market. Futurists sometimes speculate that the
only people who will have jobs decades into the future will be highly
skilled computer scientists and technicians. But actually workers such
as sanitation men, construction workers, firemen, police, and so forth,
will also have jobs in the future because what they do involves pattern
recognition. Every crime, piece of garbage, tool, and fire is different
and hence cannot be managed by robots. Ironically, college-educated
workers, such as low-level accountants, brokers, and tellers, may lose
their jobs in the future since their work is semirepetitive and involves
keeping track of numbers, a task that computers excel at.)
aware of all of the ins and outs of our brain's recognizing the ground,
the sky, the trees, the rocks, and so forth.
In other words, the way our brain works can be compared to a
huge iceberg. We are aware of only the tip of the iceberg, the conscious
mind. But lurking below the surface, hidden from view, is a much
larger object, the unconscious mind, which consumes vast amounts of
the brain's "computer power" to understand simple things surrounding it, such as figuring out where you are, whom you are talking to,
and what lies around you. All this is done automatically without our
permission or knowledge.
This is the reason that robots cannot navigate across a room, read
handwriting, drive trucks and cars, pick up garbage, and so forth. The
U.S. military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop mechanical soldiers and intelligent trucks, without success.
Scientists began to realize that playing chess or multiplying huge
numbers required only a tiny, narrow sliver of human intelligence.
When the IBM computer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry
Kasparov in a six-game match in 1997, it was a victory of raw computer
power, but the experiment told us nothing about intelligence or consciousness, although the game made plenty of headlines. As Douglas
Hofstadter, a computer scientist at Indiana University, said, "My God, I
used to think chess required thought Now, I realize it doesn't. It doesn't
mean Kasparov isn't a deep thinker, just that you can bypass deep thinking in playing chess, the way you can fly without flapping your wings."
(Developments in computers will also have an enormous impact
on the future of the job market. Futurists sometimes speculate that the
only people who will have jobs decades into the future will be highly
skilled computer scientists and technicians. But actually workers such
as sanitation men, construction workers, firemen, police, and so forth,
will also have jobs in the future because what they do involves pattern
recognition. Every crime, piece of garbage, tool, and fire is different
and hence cannot be managed by robots. Ironically, college-educated
workers, such as low-level accountants, brokers, and tellers, may lose
their jobs in the future since their work is semirepetitive and involves
keeping track of numbers, a task that computers excel at.)