The Life and Times of Multivac

Humans are threatened by the dramatic growth of science and technology. Ignoring the consequences of inappropriate motivation, people spread knowledge through observation and experimentation. Isaac Asimov - the author of "the age of multiple lives and life" - uses mathematics or mathematical science to solve the fears occurring in the world of human machine control. What people are afraid is to lose them to all other things in the world, that is to distinguish themselves from humans.

The story tells about the development of a series of computers called Multivac and its relationship with humans through 7 historical scenes. In each of the first six scenes, different characters make the same question to the computer; that is, a way to avoid the threat of human survival through the heat of the universe. The problem is the same as "how to drastically reduce the net entropy of the universe". Can you reverse the operation of the second law of thermodynamics "used as an increase in the entropy of the universe in the story." The only answer from Multivac is "to get data to get a meaningful answer It is difficult to obtain ".

Decades ago, in his story "The Last Question", Isaac Asimov touched the mystery of machine learning. A large computer named Multivac is trying to answer this question in space. Now, billions of years ago, it came up with an answer ... but I will not destroy it for you. I thought Thompson's article was interesting as we accept AI (and trusting) is a prerequisite for their long-term success. What makes us even more difficult is that when we know that AI is right there is an example in the real world. This is useful when you search "books" with Google Photos and get a lot of photos with books. It was very impressive when I searched my Google photos "calm" - a more abstract term - and got pictures of the sunset and the landscape.

In the concept of Multivac, Asiov inferred the tendency of centralization. This is a description of the planning of computing technology in the 1950s as a centralized, global computer. After seeing his adaptation by planetarium, Asimov concluded that this story is "personally" the best science fiction he wrote; he called it "an ugly boy" (1958 9 Higher position in "200th Anniversary" (1976) which I put in the month). Then that has the most strange influence on my readers. I am often asked to write whether they can name the story. They do not remember the titles, but when they explain the story it is always the "last question".