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"There's a tendency to think that maybe if we can just throw enough hardware at the AI problem, then evolution can take care of the rest. Certainly that's how God went about making us."
- Rudy Rucker
 |
| Synthetic Intellect | ||
| A device for providing a robot with intelligence. |
After an encounter with the weird Crystal Folk of Callisto, the ordinarily reliable robot assistant had become unreliable. Even insane! The robot (also called an "automat") deliberately downed the rocket ship on Saturn, and distributed the odd crystalline life forms on its surface.
Once, in a New York apartment, an old-style automat had gone crazy. It had hammered its way down through five floors before it had broken itself.
Robot madness! The trouble was not with the ship, but with Scarecrow’s intricate mechanical brain. Bar had heard of such mishaps before.
('Mad Robot' by Raymond Z. Gallun)
| HE HAD TO repair the robot some way, so that it would again be useful. He lifted its massive headpiece, and unscrewed the platinum cranium that contained Scarecrow’s marvelous synthetic intellect. There must be some obstruction that had caused the trouble.
He saw it at once... he began to think about things of which he could have no real understanding — of alien sciences, different from the experimental blunderings of man in his eternal urge to master matter, and of a queer, amorphous shell in the caves of Callisto... Had the Crystal Folk known what Saturn was like, and that it was a suit- able environment for them? There were little, frosty crystals incrusting the minutely packed wires that formed the cortex of Scarecrow’s brain. They glittered and pulsated with a living fire of changing colors, suggesting intelligence. Had they influenced the automat’s actions, by a means other than that of a simple obstruction? Carefully he scraped the crystals from Scarecrow’s brain, afterward applying oil, which he knew from Professor Dunridge’s experiments would prevent a regrowth. The black, pitchy substance in which the wires of the automat’s thought machine were packed contained a Norsonium salt, and had been slightly pitted; but no serious damage had been done. Afterward Bar recharged the energy cells of the robot. “Starting back to Callisto, Scarecrow,” he said presently. “Go to your post.” “Yes, sir !” the robot replied. He was his faithful self once more. |
| Technovelgy from Mad Robot,
by Raymond Z. Gallun. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the Iridium-Sponge Brain from Adam Link's Vengeance (1940) by Eando Binder, the positronic brain from Reason (1941) by Isaac Asimov, the neuristor from My Name is Legion (1976), by Roger Zelazny and the artificial brain from Edmond Hamilton's 1926 classic The Metal Giants.
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'...great rectangular slabs of muscle, slung into a rectangular frame.'
'If the biological robots were not living creatures, they were certainly very good imitations.'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'
'... underneath they consisted of networks of cooling tubes against the skin.'
