"Paul Preuss - Human Error" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

He'd taken the edge again, and Toby reflected that it would not do to let this man keep it. "I have an
idea, Adrian. Why don't I show you what we're doing here? While you're in the neighborhood. If you've
got a few minutes."

"Yeah, yeah." He had the grace to look uncomfortable.

"Nothing secret, I assure you," said Toby cheerfully. (So don't be shy, prick.)

"Look," said Adrian. "Like I told you, I lack the social graces."
 Toby pulled a chair over for Adrian and moved his own closer to the keyboard. "Well, you were
asking about hardware. Hardware's of secondary importance to us, reallyтАФa computer is a computer is
a computer"тАФthe standard spiel, and what kind of fool does he think I take him for?тАФ"but a program . .
. now that can be something different. . . . "

Adrian folded himself onto the chair and, as the minutes stretched, began lolling like a rag doll, while
Toby painstakingly outlined his most recent attempts to shape programs that could generate diverse
descriptions of linguistic objects and relate them in ways not only logical but, as Toby dearly hoped,
pragmaticтАФand maybe creative as well.

That final goal, he was forced to admit, was still far in the future. But pragmatism was within reach.

The higherтАФthe more "perfect"тАФthe organism, the more slowly it developed, said Toby, and the
same was true of programs capable of learning from experience. Only by acquiring knowledge about the
world and expressing that knowledge in words, by experiencing success and failure in using words to
influence the course of eventsтАФby talking up a storm and taking the consequences, like any
two-year-oldтАФ only thus could a machine master language, beyond a few stock phrases manipulated
according to structural rules of limited flexibility. Only by combining experience of language and the real
world had a machine, on two occasions nowтАФand here Toby dared hint at what was uppermost on his
mindтАФbeen able to understand a pun.

But Adrian seemed bored by Toby's lecture. From time to time he interrupted with such remarks as
"You really happy waiting five minutes for that subroutine to run?" meanwhile leaning precariously
backward in the folding chair, his thumbs hooked in his frayed pants pockets.

Toby assumed his questions were rhetorical.

When for the third time he got no answer, Adrian started howling. Howling like an infant, or so
Toby thought, until he realized Adrian was singing.

"I once knew a woman named Salleee/ Her hair was as bright as theee sun/ But when I told Sally I
luvved her/ She said I was no goddam fun. . . . "

Toby had heard the tune before, but that time the words had had something to do with "acres of
clams."

Adrian really leaned into the chorus: "She said I was no goddam fun, me boys/ She said I was no
goddam fun. . . . "

By the second verse Lassiter had already walked out. Droege followed not long after.