"...New Residence was the largest city on Earth."
-SM Stirling and David Drake, The Forge IN Stirling and Drake, Warlord (Riverdale, NY, 2003), pp. 1-305 AT CHAPTER ONE, p. 4.
Is the word "Earth" correct here? (On first opening a futuristic sf novel, we have to learn the context and can be disoriented for the first few pages.)
A voice that addresses Raj Whitehall confirms that it is a computer although not as he uses the term and further explains that it is:
"...a sentient artificial entity of photonic subsystems..." (p. 14)
OK. The AI issue has (probably) been addressed sufficiently for fictional purposes. A mere computer like this laptop is not conscious whereas a sentient artificial entity is by definition conscious and might also perform computer functions. A mere computer function is programmed processing of symbols without any knowledge of their meanings whereas a sentient entity is capable of knowledge.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, but the Battle Computer called "Center" in THE GENERAL books must have been almost the first SF story I read which addressed the idea of Artificial Intelligence in ways I thought both interesting and capable of making me suspend my disbelief. And Poul Anderson did the same for me in his HARVEST OF STARS books.
Sean
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