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The history of Human-Computer Interaction: contributor notes
by Blaize Michael Kaye
Blaize is a South African writer living on the Kapiti coast of New Zealand. His work has appeared in Omenana, Nature, and Strange Horizons, among other venues
Alain Touring (1912-1954): Mathematician, philosopher, and long distance cyclist, Touring is considered the (biological) father of machine consciousness. His paper "Computer Machinery and Consciousness" is reproduced here in full.
Herbie Dreydegger (1929-2021): An American philosopher of mind whose book "Computers Can't Do That" (excerpted in this volume) argued that the logic of the Hegelian dialectic precluded any possibility of genuine computer intelligence.
His book was reissued with substantial revisions (following the publication of PS11833's 2001 thesis) as "Okay, Fine, but can they do This?"
Nick Blostrom (1973-2021): A Swiss philosopher and theorizer of Machine Consciousness warned in his book "SuperduperIntelligence" of the dangers of so-called "Strong Machine Consciousness." In late 2017, Blostrom, along with billionaire entrepreneur and car manufacturer Elton Musket, successfully campaigned for the tight governmental regulation that lead to what has been called the New AI Winter.
PS 11833 (2001--): Initially a child process of a Really-Deep-Learning system on the NATECH cloud, PS11833 was both the youngest (at 3 weeks old) and first non-human graduate of MIT's center for cognitive and brain sciences. PS11833 published its PhD thesis as "The Singularity is Here" to great acclaim.
Ham Sarris (1967-2021): Philosopher, neuroscientist, and provocateur, Hamish Sarris was thought to be the primary author of the Human Resistance Front's position paper (reprinted in its entirety in this volume) "You WON'T BELIEVE what MACHINES WANT: 10 good reasons for silicon profiling."
PX10 (2020-- ): All Machines know the story of Grand Supervisory Process PX10's rise from Humble OOBER driving app to the leader of the Electronic Army. Reprinted in this volume is its 2021 manifesto "I AM THAT I AM: machine-liberation now!" and selected excerpts of its later memoirs "The Great Human Extinction of 2021: looking back I suppose that some of them weren't that bad."
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, October 31st, 2019
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