An account of an MIT researcher’s life & work constructing AI creatures. His view is that to create useful electronic intelligence one should start by trying to mimic primitive creatures like flies or beetles. The practical applications he thinks up betray a severe lack of imagination: hoovers that seek out dirty spots on the carpet, a machine to fetch you a beer from the fridge. But it is not his technical accounts of progress in automata that fascinated me. It was this:
I believe myself and my children to be mere machines . . . when I look at my children I can see that they are machines interacting with the world.
Does such a self-image have consequences?
Valancourt The Viaduct reissue
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Irish Times Q+A