The Turing Option

Although this trip lacked the showiness of the Marine transfer that had brought Brian to the hospital, everything still proceeded with professional efficiency. A squad of soldiers moved into place, surrounding them when they walked down the hall; others kept pace before and behind. The officers’ parking lot had been cleared of all vehicles — despite a lot of high-level protests — and a large transport copter now sat in the middle of it with its rotors turning. It lifted off as soon as they had all climbed in. Fast attack choppers circled them as they rose, getting altitude before they headed across the bay and over the sweep of streets and homes of San Diego. They followed the freeway west, then turned and went even higher to get over the mountains. It was a beautiful, sunny day with visibility apparently unlimited.

Away from the hospital at last, Brian felt elated and confident. He liked the view, first the craggy and bare mountains, then the parched colors of the desert beyond. They passed over the buildings and golf courses of Borrego Springs, then on to the desert. The slashed and desolate badlands drifted by below, then greenery appeared ahead. The squared-off area of low buildings and grassy plots grew larger as they dropped down toward it, settling easily onto the helipad. The attack copters dipped in one last protecting circle, then hurtled away — tracked automatically by the SAM radar. A soldier opened the copter’s door.

Brian climbed out with no qualms, no fear. He would never remember what had happened to him here, was confident that it would not happen in this place again. What he wanted to do most was to get to work.

“Want to see your quarters?” the Major asked. Brian shook his head.

“Later if you don’t mind. The lab first.”

“You’re the man. Your personal gear will be in your room. I’ll walk you about today so the troops can see you.”

“No ID needed?”

“Everyone else is going to be heavy with it. You don’t need it. All the security is designed with one end in mind — keeping you safe. I hope that you will get to know the men. They’re a good team. But right now it is more important that they know you. If you will just wait here for a minute I’ll be right back and we will get started.”

He moved quickly away toward the buildings. Ben pointed.

“That’s the lab building,” he said. “The big one with the gold-sputtered windows. Your own lab entrance is around the back, a special wing.”

“It looks great! You know — I really can’t wait to get my hands on more computer power, to debug the new systems described in the notes. I have already worked up some opening programs on the portable — but it simply isn’t adequate for the kind of debugging I need to do. I need much more speed than that old portable laptop has. And much more memory. I am using some extremely large knowledge bases — which must be maintained in memory. Without memory, there can be no knowledge. And without knowledge, there can be no intelligence — I should know!”

“Are you saying that intelligence is just memory?” Ben said. “I can’t believe that.”

“Well, something like that, but without the ‘just.’ As far as I’m concerned, you need two kinds of things for thought to proceed — and both are based on memory. I don’t care if it’s a man or machine. First you need your processes — the programs to do the actual work. And you need the stuff that those programs will work on — that’s your knowledge, your records of your experiences. And both the programs themselves and the knowledge they use must be embodied in memory.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Benicoff said. “But surely, you’d also need something else, beyond the purely mechanical. The me that is me must still be around even when I’m not using my memory.”

“What use would a me be if it doesn’t actually do anything?”

“Because without it, we’d just have a computer. Working, but not feeling. Speaking, without understanding. Surely thinking must involve more than the simple processing of memory. There must also be something to initiate the wanting and intending — and then there must be something to appreciate whatever is accomplished and then to want something more. You know, the central spirit-thing that seems to sit in the center of my head, that understands what things really mean, that’s aware of itself and of what it can do.”

Dolly is not the only superstitious person, Brian thought. “Spirit my eye! I don’t believe we need any such thing. A machine doesn’t need any magic force to make it do whatever it does. Because each present state is sufficient cause to carry it into its subsequent state. If there were that spirit inside your head, it would only be getting in your way. Minds are simply what brains do. The hard part is that, as good as technology is, we cannot make an exact duplicate of the human brain.”

“Why not? I thought that was exactly what you were doing.”

“Then you thought wrong. We only have to get parts that have similar functions, not exact copies.”