Machine Intelligence Meets Neuroscience

W hen I was finishing high school in the early 1970s, the closest normal people got to computers was using a teletype. These electromechan-ical monsters could convert bits received at glacially slow (110 baud) telephone rates into a veritable caco-phany of sound. This acoustic din was produced by lots of metal parts slamming into a paper roll somewhere inside the machine. The paper was the same consistency and smoothness as the paper towels you find in restrooms, and the bit rate was caused partly by the constraints of the acoustic couplers used in those days. I probably still have the pieces of the 300-baud modem I built out of two op-amps and two tennis shoes. My personal introduction to computing occurred when a friend suggested that we sneak into the school's " computer room " to see what a computer looked like. After suitable furtiveness, we used the key I had that opened almost everything at the school to enter the room. We sidled up to the weird contraption and peered inside. The keyboard looked more or less familiar, but there was a lot more stuff in there than on any typewriter I'd ever seen. I also noticed that the " computer " was making a humming sound, almost like electronic breathing. Just as I moved closer for a better look, the entire lashup started clattering, bouncing , gyrating, and emitting crashing waves of sound. I didn't know if that was normal, but it sure didn't sound like anything I'd ever heard before. I knew that I hadn't touched any-thing—although I probably did have some vague plans in that direction— and I hadn't seen my friend touch anything either. So now I was confronted with an even bigger puzzle: What caused the beast to leap into action? And what was it doing, anyway? With hands over our ears, we looked closer and saw that words were being printed on the endless paper towel rolling out of the top. At the time, we thought the machine was printing those words at a prodigious rate, but I'm sure whatever speed it was would be taken as a joke today. I left in wonderment. What was making the machine print out recognizable English words, even if I couldn't then understand the importance of the patterns or why the word " Basic " appeared on every page? The way the machine printed for a …