Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Non Serviam 317Imagine for a moment that I attach to my BIX 310 092 and enormous auxiliaryunit, which will be a “hereafter.” One by one, I let pass through the connecting channeland into the unit the ‘souls” of my personoids, and there I reward those who believed inme, who rendered homage unto me, who showed me gratitude and trust, while all theothers, the “ungodlies” to use the personoid vocabulary, I punish – e.g., by annihilation orelse by torture (Of eternal punishment I dare not even think – that much of a monster Iam not!) My deed would undoubtedly be regarded as a piece of fantastically shamelessegotism, as a low act of irrational vengeance – in sum, as the final villainy in a situationof total dominion over innocents. And these innocents will have against me theirrefutable evidence of logic, which is the aegis of their conduct. Everyone has the right,obviously, to draw from the personetic experiments such conclusions as he considersfitting. Dr. Ian Combay once said to me, in a private conversation, that I could, after all,assure the society of personoids of my existence. Now, this I most certainly shall not do.For it would have all the appearance to me of soliciting a sequel – that is, a reaction ontheir part. But what exactly could they do or say to me, that I would not feel the profoundembarrassment, the painful sting of my position as their unfortunate Creator? The billsfor the electricity consumed have to paid quarterly, and the moment is going to comewhen my university superiors demand the “wrapping up” of the experiment – that is, thedisconnecting of the machine, or, in other words, the end of the world. That moment Iintend to put off as long as humanely possible. It is the only thing of which I am capable,but it is not anything I consider praiseworthy. It is, rather, what in common parlance isgenerally called “dirty work.” Saying this, I hope that no one will get any ideas. But if hedoes, well, that is his business.ReflectionsTaken from Lem’s collection A Perfect Vacuum; Perfect Reviews of Nonexistent Books,“Non Serviam” is not just immensely sophisticated and accurate in its exploitation ofthemes from computer science, philosophy, and the theory of evolution; it is strikinglyclose to being a true account of aspects of current work in artificial intelligence. TerryWinograd’s famous SHRDLU, for instance, purports to be a robot who moves colouredblocks