The Jacobs Project: In Search of Pinocchio (SYMBIOSIS) by Samuel King

I. A Novel Concept
    23 June 2047
    Office of Dr. Irwin C. Jacobs, Chairman
    MIT Cybernetics Dept.
    Irwin Jacobs, renowned cyberneticist, waited impatiently for neurologist Tom Wilson's answer. "Well?"
    Tall and impeccably dressed, Wilson shook his head emphatically. "They'll absolutely tear you to pieces, Irwin."
    " They'll have to catch me first."
    The neurologist cast a dubious glance at his squat, balding and rumpled friend. "Well, that should take all of three seconds," he said, laughing.
    " Never mind. What I want to know is whether you'll join me or not. You're the best brain man in the business, and I could sure use your help. It'll be one hell of a journey."
    " Oh, I'm sure it will be—straight into professional obscurity. I just don't understand why you're going down this path. It's not as if no one has ever experimented with neural arrays before."
    " Ah, but no one else has seen their full potential," Jacobs countered. "Annnd, no one else has ever built an organic array."
    " Right, and there's a very good reason for that. Nobody knows how. And even if you solve that problem you've still got to interface the damn thing with your electronics. Another near impossible task. So, I'll ask you again, why go there?"
    " You of all people should know, unless you've got a line on hardware that can match the networking and switching capacity of the brain. Throw in the ability to create new pathways by rewiring itself, and I'd say you're on to some piece of hardware."
    " You're insane."
    Jacobs laughed. "Maybe."
    " Maybe? You've spent your entire career establishing yourself as the go to guy in AI and cybernetics. You're throwing it all away."
    " What I've spent my entire career doing is failing, forty years of it. Forty years of developing increasingly complex systems. Forty years of designing algorithms so elegant they're virtual works of art but ultimately take me farther and farther from where I want to go. The simple fact is, no matter how sophisticated we make the computers and the programs that run them, they're still incapable of doing what a six year old child can do… think."
    " By think, you mean self aware?"
    Jacobs hesitated. His friend 's question sounded very much like an indictment. "So?"
    " So, nobody serious has thought about doing that for quite a while now, and you know it. It's no longer the Holy Grail of AI."
    " Well, it's still my Holy Grail. It's the reason I went into this field." He lowered his voice and added, "I really want to do this, Tom. I always have, ever since I was a kid. Getting older hasn't changed that."
    " I don't get it. Your computers solve problems that boggle the human mind. They paint, write symphonies and God knows what else. Why do you care if they can contemplate their existence or not? What use is it to anyone?"
    " Use? We're scientists, Tom, remember? We solve problems that haven't been solved before."
    " Well, I don't know about you, but I've got to choose where to spend my general research money and choose very carefully. So, hell yes, use or relevance is a fair question. Besides, this seems less like science and more like some God complex."
    " I'm sorry. I didn't realize you had changed your field to psychology."
    " This isn't a joke, Irwin. You're contemplating professional suicide."
    Jacobs shrugged. He 'd long since stopped caring about his reputation. "Well, if wanting to expand the boundaries of AI and cybernetics is committing professional suicide then so be it. I'm sick and tired of all this stuffy orthodoxy. What happened to the sense of adventure our work used to give us? When we didn't know exactly where we were going, but we absolutely had to get there. What happened to that, huh?"
    " You sound like a damned grad student."
    " Good! I did my best work back then, but this… this would be magnificent. Can't you see it, Tom? Creating an entity that can reason with us? One that sees reality from a whole different perspective. One that can—"
    " Yes, I know," Wilson