Artificial Intelligence II

Libraries and Computers

This is the second segment of a six-part podcast (each part ca. 10 min) podcast explaining Artificial Intelligence.

This segment is the last of the general introduction in which I compare computers with libraries. Computers store, retrieve, and process information. libraries store information which we process and retrieve.

With computers, we take sounds which refer to things, express them in symbols; first letters, then decimal numbers, then binary numbers, then in high (1) or low (0) voltage in transistors. The result, in a computer is a one-dimensional sequence of 0s and 1s (which is not aware of itself).

In a library, the sounds are also expressed symbolically; letters, which are shapes, which then become ink on paper. Most libraries have much more knowledge than any individual; but the libraries are not aware of this knowledge. When we wander through a library, pick up a book, open it and begin reading, that knowledge becomes active, and conscious. Likewise, in a computer, great knowledge is stored locally (on the device itself) and remotely (on the local network or the Internet). But nowhere is the storage device aware of the meaning of the symbols it is storing. Only when we retrieve the stored symbols (e.g. reading text on our screens) that that knowledge become active and conscious.