This is Turing's stored-program concept, and implicit in it is the possibility of the machine operating on, and so modifying or improving, its own program.
The late Stephen Vincent Benet was obsessed with the possibility of the machine's turning on man in a vengeful fury and destroying him, and he….
By M. Hirsch and Stanley Edgar Hyman The New Yorker, June 9 , 1945P. 13 The late Stephen Vincent Benet was obsessed with the possibility of the machine's turning on man in a vengeful fury and destroying him, and he wrote several terrifying poems on that theme.
The late Stephen Vincent Benet was obsessed with the possibility of the machine's turning on man in a vengeful fury and destroying him, and he wrote several terrifying poems on that theme.
This is Turing's stored-program concept, and implicit in it is the possibility of the machine operating on and modifying its own program.
Ensure that there is no possibility of the machine starting up, once you get to work.
At the Moore School, von Neumann emphasised the importance of the stored-program concept for electronic computing, including the possibility of allowing the machine to modify its own program in useful ways while running (for example, in order to control loops and branching).
Turing gave quite possibly the earliest public lecture (London, 1947) to mention computer intelligence, saying, "What we want is a machine that can learn from experience," and that the "possibility of letting the machine alter its own instructions provides the mechanism for this".
In particular, it is plausible to claim that, in the year 2000, educated opinion had altered to the extent that, in many quarters, one could speak of the possibility of machines' thinking and of machines' learning without expecting to be contradicted.
But the drama sparked by the possibility of a machine that thinks is less important than the idea itself, whether it regards the seeming second life of the world online or even virtual life of the movie that, so often, overwhelms and bewilders the lives of its creators, for whom it is seemingly more alive than life itself.
So when Middle reveals the possibility of a machine that could end the drought and therefore everyone's misery, it certainly adds to his credibility that Henry, a total stranger, thinks investing in it is the best idea since Franklin D. Roosevelt, the current president, repealed Prohibition.
