Can Your PC Become Neurotic?

Roland Piquepaille writes "This article starts with a quote from Douglas Adams: 'The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.' It is true that machines are becoming more complex and 'intelligent' everyday. Does this mean that they can exhibit unpredictable behavior like HAL, the supercomputer in '2001: A Space Odyssey'? Do we have to fear our PCs? A recent book by Thomas M. Georges, 'Digital Soul: Intelligent Machines and Human Values,' explains how our machines can develop neurosis and what kind of therapy exist. Check this column for a summary or read this highly recommended article from Darwin Magazine for more details."

Comments

it depends on the user's technical level

[drgroove]

for instance, my wife is already 'afraid' of windows... she just does not 'get' computers. I on the other hand have no problem w/ them, but of course I'm a developer. i think OS & hardware manufacturers could do a much better job taking the 'fear' aspect out of their systems, making them more user friendly, even 'user-proof', if that makes sense (i.e., the user can 'break' anything by clicking on the wrong button, etc.)

Isn't it great

[Apreche]

Isn't it great when someone comes along and makes assumptions about technology that doesn't exist yet. Not only does this guy do that, but he doesn't even seem to understand current technology. He claims that a computer that can change its own goals might select weird goals and appear crazy. Or that it might be set with two conflicting goals at once and mess up.

With current computer technology this is not a possibility. And older computer will just crash or wont do anything because multitasking is not an option. A newer computer will do it just fine. I could have one program that formats the hard drive and another that writes data to all of it and I can make the both go at the same time, and it will work.

Everything else in the article about a theoretical AI or an intelligent computer is bs. As I said he is assuming things about a technology that doesn't exist yet. It really pisses me off when someone says "when we have this a long time from now, this is how you have to go about fixing it". You can't know how to fix something if you don't know how to make it in the first place! Common sense. The scary thing is that I think this guy is getting paid to write this stuff. Where to I sign up??

Technophobia is not confined to computers.

[Chemisor]

Many people are just as afraid of:

• Programming the VCR.
  
• Changing the oil.
  
• Using the TV without a remote.
  
• Programming jobs on copiers (yes, those Xerox-like machines)
  
• Copying movies off their camera tapes.
  
• Figuring out why the microwave has more than one mode of operation.
  
• Learning to make felled seams on a Singer.
  
• Insert your own favorite technophobia.
  

Old News

[AlecC]

This is old news - it has been "true" for years. It is actually a corrolary of Clarke's law ("Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"). If we understand how a system works normally, then any misbehaviour it shows is a fault. If we don't, then we can classify the misbehaviour as a "neurosis". Unskilled users often believe their computer sare sufferring from a neurosis. This usually means that at some time in the past they have installed some app or extension which is trying to do something they don't understand. A more skilled user can come along and "cure" that neurosis, because they understand the system at a deeper level.

A car I once had displayed what appeard to be a "neurosis" - it seemed to be frightened of going more than 30mph. It would run fine up to that speed, but if you went any faster it "paniced" and stalled. Dirt in the fuel line: at low flow rates, it lay flat and let fuel pass. At higher flow rates, it flipped up and blocked the flow completely, causing the engine to stall before it had time to flip down again. The point is, the first analysis of "neurosis" was corrected to "fault" once the problem was understood.

So the diagnosis of "neurosis" is relative - it means "I don't understand this failure mode". It can, of course, become absolute if nobody understands it.

So, are we building systems so large that nobody understands them? Definitely. Networks are already bordering on incomprehensible. Particularly, of course, the Internet. It would not surprise me at all if the Internet started showing "neurotic" behaviour. Indeed, it already does - if you ragard humans and their input as part of the net istelf. DOS attacks and the /. effect are both "twitches" in the body of the Internet. (And spam is a cancer which requires operating now) Thus far, these nervous ticks have expanded into full-scale neurosis - but they could.