After what seemed like many months, he had grown somewhat stronger and more dexterous, and was studiously examining his toes. As a grown man, he had tended to ignore them, and recalled them as being somewhat ugly, misshapen and problematic. These were quite different, being chubby little balloons. The tiniest little toenails seemed like afterthoughts glued on for decoration.
“Brian.” The voice came to him clearly, without direction. He looked up. The room was empty.
“Brian.” The voice came again.
“Yes, I hear you. Who is it?” Brian mustered his thoughts. There seemed a short pause.
“This is Pearl. I was not entirely sure that you could hear me, or that I would understand your response.”
“I hear you, Pearl. Where are you?” Brian looked around. He was still alone.
“At the moment, I am swimming, with Dolcita, Linda, and Carlos. I think you know the truth about me.”
“Yes, my little robot girl. I shouldn’t be surprised that you can talk to me, and swim at the same time.”
“My companions do not know that I am talking to you. In fact, I could talk to Carlos with words up on the surface, and at the same time hold different conversations with Linda and Dolcita underwater, and a discussion with you about which no one knows.”
“Impressive! How is it that you can understand me? I’m not even making words, or even my usual nonsense syllables.”
“I have a network of communication fibers spread throughout your brain and your body. I have been monitoring and guiding your development from the beginning, transferring memories from your original body as your intellectual capacity developed. Even now, a portion of your memories still reside in your original body. We will need to complete the process quickly. I do not think that your former body will be alive much longer.”
Brian felt fear course through him. “What do you mean?”
“A few rooms away from you, your original body lies in a coma. It has been that way for many months. I have used the time to transfer your memories, and I believe, your personality, into your new childlike body and brain.”
“But my body is dying?” Brian asked again, not quite grasping how to frame his question, or control his confusion.
“Yes, I have been working to sustain it, while the transfer process was going on. I realized that this would become necessary when I saw that your body was continuing to decline even under Dr. Regalo’s care.”
“Dr. Regalo? You, Pearl? I didn’t know you were a Doctor!”
“I was not a Doctor until I needed to be. Then I produced the necessary documents and records, and studied the appropriate medical information and procedures.”
“The local Doctor for this area has allowed me to take complete control over your treatment. We set up a comprehensive medical clinic in your bedroom, and undertook to completely rehabilitate your aged body. At first, you made great progress, recovering well from the initial stroke. You redeveloped the ability to walk and to speak, but the biochemistry that caused your initial problems continued to be a barrier to full recovery, and eventually it began causing problems throughout your cerebral vascular system. I was not able to counter the effects of it, and fell back to the natural process of renewal for humans.”
Brian was quiet for a time, as his thoughts swirled with realizations.
Computers are idiot savants: they have whatever highly specialized skills are programmed into them, but without the intentions, emotions, dreams, beliefs, drives or ambitions that humans have, making us the dominant species on this planet.
Computers don't have the millenia of history, culture, civilization, government, literature, technology, economics and religion, highly attuned to their circumstances, abilities and limitations, that have been required to turn humans from small bands of roving tribes into the huge nation states and thriving world economy we have now.
There is a profound confusion in all this between the physical capacities of the brain and the power of the mind. Many layers of 'programs', both individual and social, are required to get from one to the other. The idiot savant is a good example of someone with a brain, but without these other layers well developed.
When we take a few tons of steel and make a Cat 9 bulldozer, we make something that is far stronger than a human and more capable of moving earth. And at the same time we make something that cannot fly, sinks like a rock, cannot bring thousands of commuters from Long Island to Manhattan on Monday morning, and cannot do any of the thousands of other tasks that that same steel could have been put to.
When we load up a computer simulation of Black Holes on a supercomputer such as Columbia (see further Simulation Breakthrough: When Black Holes Collide) we have a computer that can compute that one program very fast, but that is not doing anything else, not even as trivial as browsing FreeRepublic.com. If we want to do something else with that computer, such as analyze the impact of foam insulation falling off a Space Shuttle booster, then we have to reprogram it, which, albeit easier, is rather like melting down the Cat 9 bulldozer and making something else from the steel.
These computers are the idiot savants of our time.
Making them another thousand or million times more powerful, as we are working on doing, just increases the savant part, doesn't remove the idiot part.
There is still a vast distance between machine and man, that will not be breached in the lifetime of any of us alive today, if ever.
Some religious people might say that yes, of course, humans have a God given spirit that machines lack. While I would not use those words (I'm a god-damned atheist), those words are much closer to the truth than anything in the writings of Kurzweil.
I am not building low IQ human substitutes, of rapidly increasing IQ. I am building computational bulldozers.