Sunday, October 13, 2019
The Inquest :: essays research papers
Credibility and Conflict in Lem’s â€Å"The Inquest†â€Å"The year is 2029, and machines will convince us that they are conscious and that they have their own agenda worthy of our respect. They will embody human qualities; claim to be human†¦and we’ll believe them.                                         - Ray Kurzweil Perhaps Kurzweil slipped up when he put a date in his prediction. Perhaps he intended it to be more of a challenge than a guess. Ultimately, it separates the theorists, like Kurzweil, from the storytellers, like Stanislaw Lem. Lem’s â€Å"The Inquest†takes a glimpse into the future to show readers what it may look like some day. He uses a futuristic setting to examine the possible role of machines in our daily lives. Conflict, credulity and human nature are at the forefront of this story, all of which allude to deeper meaning in today’s world. The level of robotics and AI in Lem’s â€Å"The Inquest†is not farfetched. That is to say, the story is not unconvincing, but simply exaggerated for our time. Though the events are assumed to be taking place in the future, Lem references no time period and forces the reader to blindly suspend disbelief. The premise of the story revolves around this fact, and gives the story its body as a work of science fiction. The most relevant instance of computer exaggeration is in the supporting characters we meet: the non-linear officers of the Goliath. The main character, Commander Pirx, is known to be human, and must command a mixed group of humans and robots, not knowing the true identity of each. Here we have the story’s biggest assumption about AI in the future; that robotics and AI will be indistinguishable from human abilities and intelligence. This colossal inference about computer technology is only acceptable to the reader when coupled with the lack of a given time period. Pirx is asked to command these two groups on a routine space mission, all the while making inference on their actions and interactions during a variety of real world tests. He is then to make a formal report to the creators of these machines to be used as a formal test result. The fact that Pirx cannot immediately distinguish between the humans and the robots implies that all the machines have passed the Turing test. Though this story is set in the future, this test is a standard by which we judge the intelligence of machines today, and gives us some insight on the level of AI that Lem implies.
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