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Themesicon: navigation pathAesthetics of the Digitalicon: navigation pathArt/Science
 
 
 
 
 

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beyond that for the development of interactive, digital systems. This communication channel permits bi-directional information exchange, and therefore also learning processes. On the basis of this method, Turing repudiated the thesis set up by Ada Lovelace in 1842. [22] Using investigations made with the ‹analytic machine› of Charles Babbage, Lady Lovelace had claimed that a machine can do only that which it is instructed to do, and therefore is never capable of producing anything truly new. [23] Turing contradicted this thesis with the question «who can be certain that ‹original work› that he has done was not simply the growth of the seed planted in him by teaching, or the effect of following well-known general principles?» [24] He further pointed out that the machine must be to a certain degree ‹undisciplined› or random-controlled in order that its behavior can be considered intelligent. [25]

Precisely this element of chance was what lent the machine ‹creative› ability, namely the ability to solve problems.

Although discrete machines that could pass the Turing Test are feasible, they would succeed not

 

because they were replicas of the human brain but because they would have been programmed accordingly. As Turing himself realized, the basic problem lies in the area of programming. In fact, it was not necessary to wait the fifty years assumed by Turing in order to program «computers, with a storage capacity of about 109, to make them play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than a 70 per cent chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.» [26] The programs have been written, and have passed the Turing Test with a high degree of interactivity. One might therefore conclude that the problem is not solely confined to investigating the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence. [27]

Viewed from the contemporary perspective, cybernetics and AI cannot be reduced to solely scientific, economic, or technical interest. Since these theories belong to a socio-technical field in which communication structures, world-views and people-views are formed and transformed, they are concerned with philosophic issues of perception, cognition, language, ethics, and aesthetics. If

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