Product Description

By 1949, the idea of duplicating human thought processes in a computer was starting to surface, as the outgrowth of code-breaking work done by Alan Turing and others in Britain during the Second World War. This ingenious work of speculative scientific fiction reconstructs what might have been said during the animated conversation flowing around Snow's rooms that fateful in Cambridge. The quintet's debate anticipates all of the basic questions which have surrounded artificial intelligence in the fifty years since. Can a machine think or merely process information? Is the brain simply a symbol-processing machine, as Turing suggests, and if so, what is the nature of meaning? Can there be, as Wittgenstein proposes, no thought without language, and no language without the social interaction of human beings?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #863310 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
It was a dark and stormy night. Four great minds, at the behest of a fifth, convened at Cambridge in 1949 to discuss artificial intelligence over a five-course dinner. Had geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, physicist Erwin Schrödinger, mathematician Alan Turing, and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein actually met that night in the rooms of Britain's science adviser C.P. Snow, they may have enacted the drama revealed in The Cambridge Quintet. This work of "scientific fiction" presents what could have been the dawn of the still-raging debate over the nature of intelligence and its reproduction in "metal, glass, and plastic".

John L. Casti's characterizations allow the reader to savour the meal and pleasantries as well as the heated arguments. His impatient, arrogant Wittgenstein betrays a frenzied frustration with the subject, sporadically attacking the very notion of artificial intelligence as impossible. Turing, quieter and yet more forceful, explains his then- new ideas with the certainty of a prophet waiting for the world to catch up with him. Haldane, Schrödinger, and Snow play the two off one another while bringing their own considerable intellects to the subject for the first time. Discussion ranges from the nature of thought to the role of language in the brain with arguments that are sophisticated but informal. Casti takes some anachronistic liberties, but these serve to remind us that, had they not both died in 1951, Wittgenstein and Turing would have made contributions of great significance to artificial intelligence theory. As the men finish their dinner, they have reached no conclusion or agreement. Like a fine meal, the satisfaction found in this book comes from its consumption, not its digestion. -- Rob Lightner

Review
'Great fun: a dramatic and accessible introduction to the provocative modern field of artificial intelligence' GUARDIAN 'Casti has organised a satisfying meal ... when the party breaks up, and Schrodinger compliments his colleagues on the stimulating nature of their discussion, his sentiments will probably be shared by many readers too' THE TIMES 'These are difficult and important issues and it is to Casti's credit that his book explains them more clearly and concisely than any other I have read' Bryan Appleyard, NEW STATESMAN 'Enthralling, fascinating, Casti not only captures the excitement, but makes the ideas he relates intelligible to the layman.' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

THE TIMES
'[when] Schrodinger compliments his colleagues on the stimulating nature of their discussion, his sentiments will probably be shared by many readers too'

Customer Reviews

A charming book
Absolutely a must read for every Artificial Intelligence passionate
(passionate not scientist!).

Everything comes from the Turing's question: "Can machines think?"
What does it mean thinking? A geneticist, a physicist, a philosopher
and a mathematician can share the same idea of "thinking"?
It's a fiction discussion but really well built, so well to charm
the reader: obviously the target is making difficult concepts approachable.