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	The Future of Automatic Machinery

Comments by Arthur L. Samuel

On the whole, this paper is a level-headed assessment of the future of
automatic machinery and its relation to man. Professor Wiener correctly
notes that ``The gradual encroachment of auomatic machinery on the
function of mankind and its social significance is no novelty.'' and he
goes on to discuss what he believes to be the major contribution that
the computer will make toward man's betterment.  In contrast with
some of his later papers (see, for example, Some Moral and Technical
Consequences of Automation [60d]), Professor Wiener, in this paper, sees
no great harm in the development of computers, stating that ``If we accept the
primacy of man over his means of production, there is no reason why the
age of the machine may not be one of the greatest flourishing of human
prosperity and culture.''

Professor Wiener's complacency in 1952 was based, in part, on his belief
that the computer would always be severely limited in what it could do,
because of its ``spatial inferiority'' as compared with the human brain,
and that, in his own words ``- - - the machine, for all the similarities
that its functioning shows with that of the human organism, is at a much
lower level of organization and complexity; and the dangers it offers to
humanity are not those of an independent will and purpose for existance,
but merely those of a material embodiment of our own stupidities and
shortcomings.''  He did not forsee, nor could he have forseen, the
startling developments of the ensuing years, the increase in complexity
and speed of the computer, the improvements in reliability, the reduction
in cost, and finally the advent of very large scale integration (VLSI)
which is now promising one million circuit elements on a
centimenter-square chip.

Professor Wiener was correct in pointing out difficulties that were to be
encountered in attempts to assign to computers certain tasks that men do
well, but he erred in assuming that the difficult was, in fact,
impossible, Curiously enough, the principal application of the computer
has been in the fields of information storage and information processing,
fields that Professor Wiener thought to be beyond the computer's
capabilities, and the automatic factory, as he invisioned it, is still not
fully realized.

In later years, Professor Wiener was to develop an almost paranoid
obsession with the dangers of automation.  It is one of the ironies of
fate that he did not live long enough to see that his fears were largely
unjustified and that the computer was to make a very large positive
contribution to man's progress.  One can only speculate as to what he
would say on ``The Future of the Automatic Factory,'' were he living
today.