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\magnification=1200
\date{November 18} 
\stanford
%\personal

\to{Martin M. Atlas\cr
$1↑0$ de Marzo 1376\cr
Rosario - Santa Fe\cr
Codigo 2000\cr
ARGENTINA\cr}

\noindent{Dear Martin:}

This is in reply to your letter dated 6/25/83 which has just reached me after a 
quite unexplainable delay.  I am sorry that I do not know Spanish and so you will
have to have someone who speaks English translate this for you.

Your expectation that a computer might design a better Boy Scout tent is
based on a common misunderstanding as to what a computer can and cannot
do. Many people who should know better, including people who write for
papers and magazines also suffer from this misunderstanding and so it is
not surprising that a boy your age might be misled.

A computer can not do anything that we do not already know how to do but
it can do what it is told to do incredibly fast and it seldom if ever
makes a mistake.  If we know enough about some fairly complicated task to
break it down into a sequence of simple steps and if we can write these
steps down in a language that the computer understands then, and only
then, can the computer do some more complicated task. So if we want a
computer to design a tent we must already know how to do the design ourselves.

This does not mean that the computer cannot do things that an ordinary person would
not be able to do, because it can, but only because it is incredibly fast
and extremely accurate. There is a difference between knowing how to do
something and actually being able to do it in a reasonable period of time.
And, of course, once someone has written a set of instructions that will cause
the computer to perform some complicated task, then copies of these
instructions can be made available to other people and these other people
can then get their computers to follow these instructions and do things
that they, individually, do not know how to do.

I told the computer how to play checkers by writing
what is called a computer program.  The computer simply followed my
instructions.  It was able to play checkers better than I can,
because it is faster than I am. It could consider all of the moves that it
might make and then all of the replies that its opponent might make and
then its counter replies and so forth for many moves in advance, something
that would take me years to do and that I could not do without
overlooking some possibilities and without making many mistakes. Since it could
look farther ahead than I can do, it could play better than I can play.

Just remember, the computer is a very dumb but very obedient servant that is
extremely fast and that practically never makes a mistake. When the computer
appears to be unusually smart it is only because some unusually smart person
has told it exactly what to do.

I am afraid that this letter will not be of much help, unless it prompts
you to learn a bit more about computers and about writing computer programs.

\sign {\hfill Sincerely yours,\cr
\ssqip\cr 
\hfill Arthur L. Samuel}
\fin % C'est tout.  
\end