Science: Creative Electronics

Some scientists say that electronic apparatus may eventually learn to think. Some say no. Dr. E. W. Engstrom, head of the Laboratories Division of Radio Corporation of America, belongs to the yes or gee-whiz faction.

Said Engstrom last week at a Chicago conference: “Electronics, with its unlimited ability to count, remember and control … is … literally asking to take over certain duties which have been performed by men’s minds—thinking processes. What man can conceive, comprehend and perform, he will be able to construct in electronic systems to do his bidding, and the electronic performance will be at least as effective as the human performance . . . The electronic system will sense, react, interpret, compute, act and control. It will do this using what is the equivalent of thinking . . .

“How far will this go? Certainly it will include thinking processes which are repetitive. Certainly, it will ‘think through’ and execute wherever situations can be pre-analyzed and stored in electronic memory. Maybe this will include situations [now] considered as creative thinking, or at least in the border area of the creative. This may be so for the materialistic, the scientific and the humanistic—for all the arts and sciences.”