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45
II
The written word can serve as a broker between natural and artificial
intelligence. It straddles the two: natural intelligence is embodied and
modified in writing, yet writing is somewhat artificial, something of
an artifact. Let us investigate this mediating role of writing more
closely. How can writing serve as a bridge to artificial intelligence?
We will circle into this issue by asking a more general question
about the conditions necessary for the emergence of artificial intelli
gence: What things are required to allow artificial intelligence to
come into being? An obvious answer is that certain computer
languages, such as LISP and Prolog, are necessary. Another is that
the computers themselves, with the appropriate hardware, architec
ture, and memory, are also required. Still another answer is that the
mathematical logic devised during the past hundred years or so by
Gottlob Frege, Giuseppe Peano, Bertrand Russell, and others was
necessary as a condition for both the software and the hardware we
now have. It is interesting that these advances in mathematics and
logic were carried on for purely theoretical reasons?to show, for
example, that arithmetic is a part of pure logic (Frege's goal)?and
not to prepare a language for thinking machines.5 The technological
application took advantage of the opening provided by the theoret
ical achievement: "The opportunity created the appetite, the supply
the demand."6
All these prerequisites for artificial intelligence?computer lan
guages, computer hardware, and formalized logics?have been made
by identifiable persons at definite times. We can give names and dates
for their invention. But there is another enabling condition that is of
still another nature. It is of much greater philosophical interest, and
it is also much more elusive; it is hard to say when it appeared on the
scene and who was responsible for bringing it about. But without it,
Ill
QUOTATION
DESIRE
Desire is involved with thinking in two ways. There is first the desire
to know more: the curiosity to learn more facts or the urge to
understand more fully. But there is also the desire for other satisfac