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\F2\CSTANFORD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY
\CDEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
\F0
							September 19, 1974

Editor
\F1The New York Times\F0
229 West 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036

Dear Sir:

\J	Your September 17 editorial assumes that the United States
is responsible for the success or failure of the Rome conference on
food and implicitly assumes U.S. responsibility for solving the food
problems of the backward countries.  The U.S. is no more responsible for
solving other countries' food problems than it is for policing the
world or solving its population problems.  Solving these problems
requires authority over the policies of sovereign countries that
isn't offered and that we won't try to get.

	However, the illusion that the United States is responsible
for solving the food problem allows politicians in these countries
to put their priorities elsewhere.  Specifically, some of the
poor countries in the World Population Conference advanced the convenient
idea that the advanced countries were responsible for their lack
of development, and nothing specifically had to be done about
population, because population growth would stop with development,
and the advanced countries were responsible for that.  This allows
the Indian government to put its organizational and scientific
capabilities into wars with Pakistan, taking over neighboring states,
and developing nuclear weapons.

	In my opinion, the U.S. is not morally responsible for
preventing famine in India.  Further, I don't think the U.S. public
will make prolonged sacrifices in an attempt to do so.  Still further,
setting a clear limit on what they can expect from us is necessary to
make solving their own population and food problems dominant in the
politics of the backward countries.

	The only condition under which the U.S. could ever take responsibility
for another country's problems would be if that country declared itself
\F1governmentally bankrupt\F0 and the U.S. was given authority to enforce
whatever measures it thought would solve the problem.  We are far from
being willing to undertake any such thing, and no country's leaders are
about to declare themselves bankrupt, but it may eventually come to that.

	In short, the only way to do good these days may be to take the
onus of being bad guys unwilling to buy one more respite for the
backward countries.  Of course, the World Food Conference may come up
with a practical proposal that will convince us that just one more
effort will do the trick, but it is much more likely that we will get
just one more moralistic effort to convince us that the problem is
ours rather than theirs.\.
							Sincerely yours,



							John McCarthy
							Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
							Professor of Computer Science