I: Where Does Intelligence Live?

The afternoon rain had settled into the comfortable sort that seemed designed expressly for old colleges. In the Senior Common Room, the fire had surrendered any practical purpose several months previously but continued burning from institutional habit.

Professor Quillibrace was annotating a book with alarming restraint. Mr Blottisham was reading a newspaper whose headline declared:

CAN MACHINES REALLY THINK?

He lowered it with evident satisfaction.

"There it is again."

Professor Quillibrace looked up.

"What is?"

"The question."

"What question?"

Blottisham tapped the headline.

"Can machines really think?"

"It appears every few months. Very reassuring."

"Reassuring?"

"Certainly. Shows society remains interested in important matters."

"I see."

"It requires an answer."

Quillibrace closed his book.

"Does it?"

Before Blottisham could respond, Miss Elowen Stray entered carrying three cups of tea with the quiet competence of someone who had already anticipated the trajectory of the conversation.

She glanced at the newspaper.

"Oh dear."

"You've seen it?"

"I've seen that article perhaps twenty times."

"It isn't the same article."

"No," she said. "Merely the same question."

Blottisham accepted his tea.

"Which remains unanswered."

"Or," said Quillibrace, "perpetually misasked."

Blottisham frowned.

"There is nothing complicated about it."

"No?"

"One simply determines whether the machine possesses intelligence."

"And where," Quillibrace asked mildly, "shall we look?"

Blottisham blinked.

"Inside it."

"I see."

"Where else would intelligence be?"

Quillibrace smiled almost imperceptibly.

"You have just made a rather substantial philosophical commitment."

"I have?"

"You have assumed that intelligence is the sort of thing which resides inside individuals."

"Well..."

Blottisham paused.

"...yes."

"Curious."

"Why curious?"

"Because some of humanity's greatest intellectual achievements appear to have neglected informing us who, precisely, possessed them."

Miss Stray stirred her tea thoughtfully.

"No single person invented mathematics."

"Exactly."

"Nor science," she continued.

"Quite."

"Nor modern medicine."

"Indeed."

Blottisham waved a dismissive hand.

"Those were developed by intelligent people."

"Were they?"

"Obviously."

"Which one?"

Blottisham hesitated.

"Well... all of them."

"So mathematics," Quillibrace observed, "belongs equally to Euclid, Newton, Gauss, Hilbert and countless anonymous schoolteachers?"

"I suppose."

"And none of them could have produced it alone?"

"Probably not."

"So where," Quillibrace asked gently, "was the intelligence?"

Blottisham looked briefly irritated.

"In the people."

"All of them?"

"Collectively."

"Ah."

Professor Quillibrace leaned back.

"We have already travelled rather a long distance."

"We have?"

"You began by assuming intelligence lived inside individuals."

"I did."

"You have now relocated it into a civilisation."

Miss Stray smiled.

"It happens surprisingly often."

Blottisham considered this.

"I hadn't noticed."

"Most people don't."

A comfortable silence followed.

Finally Miss Stray spoke.

"I've often wondered whether writing changes thinking."

Blottisham looked puzzled.

"It records thinking."

"Does it only record it?"

She picked up a notebook from the table.

"If I write an idea down..."

"...yes?"

"...I can examine it."

"Certainly."

"I can rearrange it."

"Naturally."

"I can compare it with another."

"Yes."

"I can discover contradictions I never noticed while merely remembering it."

Blottisham frowned.

"I suppose."

"So," she asked, "did the notebook merely preserve the thought?"

He hesitated.

"...or did it become part of thinking?"

Professor Quillibrace nodded approvingly.

"An awkward question."

"It is only paper."

"So is mathematics."

Blottisham opened his mouth, closed it again, and elected to attack elsewhere.

"Very well. Writing helps."

"Does a diagram help?"

"Yes."

"A graph?"

"Certainly."

"A map?"

"Obviously."

"A library?"

"Of course."

Quillibrace folded his hands.

"Remarkable."

"What is?"

"The extraordinary number of objects apparently participating in this activity that we insist occurs entirely inside individual brains."

Miss Stray looked around the room.

"We seem rather attached to islands."

"Islands?"

"The image."

She gestured vaguely.

"We imagine minds as isolated things."

"But they are."

"Are they?"

Professor Quillibrace looked amused.

"What exactly occurs during a conversation?"

"We exchange ideas."

"Do we?"

"Obviously."

"And where, precisely, does the new idea originate?"

Blottisham looked uncertain.

"From one person."

"Always?"

"Usually."

Miss Stray shook her head.

"I've often left conversations believing something neither person thought beforehand."

"So have I," said Quillibrace.

"So have research groups."

"So have orchestras."

"So have marriages."

Blottisham stared into the fire.

"I hadn't thought of that."

"Appropriately enough."

The room became quiet again.

Rain traced uncertain paths across the windows.

At length Blottisham spoke.

"So what has this to do with artificial intelligence?"

Quillibrace smiled.

"Very little."

Blottisham looked triumphant.

"I knew it."

"So far."

"Oh."

"The machine question may prove interesting."

"It certainly is."

"But another question may prove considerably more interesting."

"Which is?"

Quillibrace looked towards the shelves lining the room.

"For thousands of years our technologies have mostly stored thought."

"The written word."

"Precisely."

"The printed book."

"Indeed."

"The library."

"Yes."

"And now?"

Professor Quillibrace allowed himself the faintest smile.

"Now we possess tools that appear capable of participating in reasoning."

Blottisham frowned.

"You mean they think?"

"I carefully avoided saying that."

"But everyone wants to know."

"They do."

"Don't you?"

Quillibrace considered.

"I find myself increasingly curious about a different matter."

"Which is?"

"What kinds of thinking become possible when reasoning itself becomes collaborative in entirely new ways?"

Blottisham was silent.

Miss Stray looked thoughtfully into her tea.

"It is rather like asking the wrong question for so long that one forgets there were others available."

Quillibrace nodded.

"Quite."

The clock struck four.

Nobody moved immediately.

Outside, the rain continued composing patterns no single drop could plausibly claim as its own.