‘It sounds as though a car has stopped downstairs,’ she said. ‘It will be gone in a moment.’
He knew that he was not going to fall asleep again, but Young Lillie stayed in bed. Once it was dawn, he got up the way that an old man does get out of bed, feeling his way, moving so gently that he made almost no noise, like a shadow. After he got up, he didn’t even go to the bathroom — he went straight downstairs. His wife asked him why he was going downstairs. He didn’t know. He just carried on going, fumbling in the dark, and once he got there, he opened the front door. There were two parts to the front door. The inner door opened into the house; the outer door opened out into the courtyard. The outer door seemed to be being blocked by something because you could only open it a crack, maybe 30 degrees. Since it was summertime, the outer door was in use — a piece of cloth had been hung over the frame so that during the daytime you could leave it open but people couldn’t see into the house. The old man couldn’t see what was blocking the door, so he had to turn sideways and slide out through the crack. He discovered that two enormous cardboard boxes were filling the tiny courtyard. The first one was blocking the door, stopping him from getting in and out; the second one had already become sodden in the wind and rain. The old man tried to push the second box somewhere out of the rain but he simply couldn’t move it — the contents couldn’t have been heavier if they had been paving slabs. He inched his way back into the house and found a couple of pieces of oiled paper to cover it with. Once he had done that, he noticed that there was a letter on top of the box, held down by the stone they normally used to prop open the front door.
The old man picked up the letter — it was from Jan Liseiwicz.
This is what he had to say:
Dear Lillie,
I am leaving and since I do not want to put anyone to any trouble, I have decided to say goodbye in this letter — I hope you can forgive me. I need to talk to you about Jinzhen — in fact, I can’t be happy until I have told you what I what I want to say. The first thing is that I hope he gets well soon. The second is that I hope you will make the best possible arrangements for his future, so that we (by which I mean humanity as a whole) can gain the greatest benefit from his genius.
To tell you the truth, in my opinion, letting Jinzhen immerse himself in an enormous and complex mathematics research topic would be the most suitable use for his remarkable talents. That in its turn creates a further problem. The world has changed, people are becoming more and more short-sighted and profit-orientated; they want to see some immediate and concrete benefit and are less and less interested in topics of purely theoretical application. This is completely stupid. It is no less stupid than entirely subordinating pleasures of the mind to those of the body. However, we cannot change this fact, any more than we can guarantee that the scourge of war has been completely eliminated from our society. It was because of this that I started to wonder whether it might not be better to encourage him to become immersed in a technical topic which would be of some concrete practical benefit. The good point of that kind of research is that you get great encouragement from it: each result pushes you on to the next one — it can be deeply fulfilling. The downside is that once you have finished you have also lost control of your project — your own personal wishes on the subject will be ignored. Your creation may bring great benefits to the world, or it may bring great harm — either way, you have no choice but to stand aside. It is said that Oppenheimer now really regrets his work on the first nuclear bomb and that he would like to rescind his creation — if he could destroy it with a blow from a hammer like a statue, I am sure that he would. But is that kind of thing possible? Once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back in again.
If you decide that you want him to try and undertake a scientific research topic, let me suggest that he work on artificial intelligence. Once we have solved that particular mystery, we will be able to create a machine that in some way mimics the human mind, and the next step will be the development of robots — inanimate human beings. Science has already begun to unlock the secrets of other organs — eyes, noses, ears — we are now even in a position where we can create artificial wings. Why cannot we begin to work on artificial intelligence? The fact is, the development of the computer involves the creation of a kind of artificial intelligence, though it is solely concerned with calculations. Since we can already create a machine that can carry out that kind of function, surely other aspects cannot be too far behind? Think about it for a moment: if we have this kind of inanimate human beings — creatures made of metal, robots powered by electricity — how many uses they could be put to! In this generation we have suffered so much warfare — in the space of less than half a century we have been forced to go through two world wars. What is more I suspect (indeed I have already seen some proof) that soon we will have another war — what a terrible thing that is! In my opinion, humanity can now make warfare even more appalling, even more frightening, even more terrible that at any point in history. It is now possible to kill a truly enormous number of people on the same field of battle, to have them die at the same time, to have them die instantly, to have them die the moment the bomb explodes. It seems that we will never be rid of warfare, and yet the hope that one day we can rid the world of this scourge has been handed down from one generation to the next. Mankind is faced with many terrible problems of this kind, which require enormous labour; which require exploration in dangerous circumstances. . Mankind seems unable to extract itself from the difficulties that beset it.
If scientists were to succeed in creating an artificial human being — a robot, a creature made of metal, a being without flesh or blood — we could allow them to do work that is at present carried out by people working in genuinely inhuman conditions, fulfilling some of our more perverse requirements. I am sure that no one could object to that. That means that this branch of scientific endeavour, once fully publicized, would have an immeasurable practical value and a wonderful future. The first step is to solve the mystery of intelligence. It is only in this way, by creating artificial intelligence, that you have any chance of making the next step and creating a robot that can undertake some of the tasks at present carried out by humans. At one time I decided that the rest of my life would be devoted to cracking the problems connected with artificial intelligence but before I had even properly begun, I was forced to give up this idea. I have never told anyone why I gave up — let me just say that it was not because of any particular problem or lack of ability, but at the express command of the Jewish people. The last few years I have been working on something very important on their behalf — the troubles that they have faced and their hopes for the future have moved me deeply; for their sake I have given up a long cherished ambition. I have said this much in the hope of piquing your interest.
Let me remind you: without Jinzhen, you cannot do this. What I mean is that if Jinzhen does eventually die from this terrible disease, you had better give up the idea of developing this project because you are too old for it. If Jinzhen survives, perhaps within your lifetime you will see one of the last great mysteries to confront humankind solved through the creation of artificial intelligence. Believe me, Jinzhen is the best person to find a solution to this problem — this is what he was born to do; God has chosen him. As you have mentioned to me before, dreams are the most mysterious manifestation of the human spirit, and this is something he has confronted day and night since the time he was a tiny child. Over the course of time, he has built up truly remarkable skills at interpreting the meaning of dreams. Although he did not realize it, right from the beginning of his conscious life, he began preparations for researching the mysteries of human intelligence. This is what he is meant to do!