PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY
Professional Ethics and Public Policy
What is professional ethics? Professionals and people practising recognised
professions use their specialised knowledge and abilities. Professional ethics refers to
the moral question of how this information should be used while offering a service to
the general public. The word professionalism originally applied to vows of a religious
order. The phrase was used in a secular context to refer to the three learned
professions of religion, law, and medicine by no later than 1675.
Ethics and public policy looks at the complex connections between economics, law,
philosophy, political science, and sociology--disciplines that deal with questions
about how people should behave and how we should regulate the behaviour of others.
The consequences of these behaviours can have a profound impact, both on the
character of the policy process and the choices made by decision makers.
Medical Ethics
In the filed of medical line things that a doctor or any medically appointed person
should do or not to do to the patient and to any normal person. Actions and the
behaviour of the doctor can vary time to time and situation to situation. Same thing
cannot be applied to everywhere or in all treatments of the patient. For different kind
of treatment, a doctor has to prepare and do things differently to different patients. A
doctor cannot be same to all the persons. But also there are some basic values that a
doctor should apply while dealing to all hid/her patients, there might be some
exceptions. Like a doctor should always talk to the patient with politeness and in a
kind manner, a doctor’s first priority should always be to save as much lives as
possible, a doctor should give more importance to the patients problems rather than
on making money by his/her profession, etc.
Here we will discuss about some of the medical fields:-
Surrogacy
Surrogacy is an arrangement where a surrogate mother bears and delivers a child for
another couple or person. There are two basic types of surrogacy: traditional
surrogacy and gestational surrogacy. In traditional surrogacy, the surrogate mother is
impregnated with the sperms of the intended father artificially, thus making her both
genetic and gestational [Link] this case the intended father but not the intended
mother has a genetic connection to the child.
In gestational surrogacy, the child is not biologically related to the surrogate mother,
who is often referred to as a gestational carrier. Instead, the embryo is created via in
vitro fertilisation (IVF), using the eggs and sperm of the intended parents or donors,
and is then transferred to the surrogate. This form of surrogacy is sometimes also
called “host surrogacy” or “full surrogacy.” In most cases, at least one intended parent
is genetically related to the child, and the surrogate is not. This makes gestational
surrogacy less legally complicated than other forms of surrogacy because stepparent
or second-parent adoption is not required.
The following people might consider gestational surrogacy:
• People who have struggled with infertility
• Hopeful single parents
• Same-sex couples
• People who don’t want a genetic link between the surrogate and their child
• Anyone who is unable to safely carry a pregnancy to term
Moral Arguments against and for surrogate motherhood:-
Moral arguments against surrogate motherhoods states that in surrogacy the unborn
child can be harmed because the surrogate mother doesn’t take care of it as she think
that it is not her own child, also it affects the family relationship of both the intended
parents and and the surrogate mother, pregnancy is often stressful, but it can be even
more challenging when you are carrying someone else’s baby. The opponents of the
surrogate maternity and the contract of surrogacy claim that such practices make the
children a product that could be purchased and sold. It is also claimed that the paid
surrogacy demotes the female body into a commercial commodity, and a tool of
reproduction. As it is an unwelcome act for the woman to have sex for money, it is
likewise undesirable for her to act as a “breeding box”.
Moral Arguments for surrogate motherhood sates that for those who have struggled
with infertility, LGBTQ couples, and those with medical conditions that make
pregnancy unsafe, surrogacy is often the answer to years of unsuccessful attempts to
create a family. A legally binding contract outlining everyone’s expectations will be
negotiated and signed prior to the embryo transfer, so everyone will know exactly
what to expect during the surrogacy process. A court order is obtained prior to birth
of the child, confirming the intended parents’ legal rights. Gestational carriers enter
into a legally binding contract with the intended parents, giving them the opportunity
to clearly outline their expectations and responsibilities during the surrogacy process.
This ensures that the surrogate will be fairly compensated and that she will not be
responsible for the baby after birth.
Legal Remedies for Surrogate Motherhood
At least four major legal remedies have been proposed for surrogate motherhood.
They include:
1. The non-enforcement of all surrogacy arrangements, commercial and non-
commercial.
2. The criminalisation of commercial, but probably not non-commercial surrogacy
arrangements.
3. The enforcement of commercial and probably also non-commercial surrogacy
arrangements through contract law.
4. The assimilation of non-commercial and perhaps also commercial surrogacy
arrangements into their traditional or modified adoption law.
Perspective of Health-care practitioners on surrogate motherhood
A majority of the physicians were positive towards altruistic surrogacy being
introduced in Sweden. Only a small percentage believed that a potential surrogate
mother can really be fully informed about what being a surrogate may imply. The
physicians expressed doubts concerning whether the potential surrogate mother could
clearly understand the risks of entering pregnancy on behalf of someone else, and
expressed support for seeing to it that a clear legal contract was written between the
involved parties. There were clear differences between the professional groups; MAR
physicians were most positive towards surrogacy, and antenatal care consultants were
least positive. Future discussions about legalisation of surrogacy should include
views from individuals within a wide field of professions such as reproductive
medicine, child healthcare, psychiatric care as well as legal representatives and
laymen.
Perspective of society on surrogate motherhood
In today’s society people have started accepting surrogacy, as they see it as to solve
the problem of infertilisation. But still majority part of the society doesn’t accept it.
They think that the birth of the baby should be natural, and we should not violate it.
Religions also criticise surrogacy as they find it against the laws of the religion. We
can can take the example of the movie ‘MIMI’ in which it was shown that how a
surrogate mother faces the problem to surrogate a child of a foreigner couple. The
movie shows the all problems faced by the surrogate mother and also how she solved
it with the help of law. In society people see it as a Taboo.
Doctor-patient Relation
A doctor-patient relationship (DPR) is regarded as the fundamental building block of
medical ethics. DPR often develops when a doctor satis es a patient's medical
requirements through examination, diagnosis, and treatment in a pleasant way. Due to
the relationship, the doctor has an obligation to the patient to treat the condition or
effectively end the relationship. To provide patients with top-notch healthcare,
primary care doctors must, in particular, create an acceptable DPR.
Fundamentals for Dynamic DPR
Several medical reviews have covered ways to form a relationship between a
physician and a patient. Some essential features are important for maintaining a
healthy DPR are covered in more detail below:
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1. Communication: Good communication skills are essential to establish DPR.
Studies have revealed that effective communication between physician and
patient has resulted in multiple impacts on various aspects of health
consequences such as improved medical, functional, and emotional condition
of patients, better patient compliance with medical treatment, enhanced
fulfilment of patient toward healthcare services, lesser risks of medical
misconduct.
2. Doctor empathy: Empathy is vital to ensure the quality of DPR. This enables
the physician to understand the symptomatic experiences and needs of
individual patients. Studies have suggested that physician empathy improves
the therapeutic effect and the patient’s quality of life.
3. Trust: Trust in doctors allows patients to effectively discuss their health issues.
Development of trust enables the patient to comply with the doctor’s guidance,
which consequently results in improvement of health.
4. Informed consent: This is based on the moral and legal arguments of the
patient’s autonomy. In relation to trust, the physician needs to be honest with
the patient and his family to provide a genuine assessment of favourable and
unfavourable outcome probabilities, along with the suggested therapy.
5. Truth telling: Truth telling is an very important thing to do. The doctor must
tell the real possibilities and the outcome to the patients or the patients’ family.
There might be some exceptions in telling truth to the patients but they must
ensure telling truth the relative and the family of the patient.
Impact of DPR in Medical Specialty
• Chronic health: Physicians who communicate well and treat patients with
chronic illnesses fairly improve the patient’s ability to manage their disease
independently with adherence to the advice of doctors. For example, patients
monitor their blood pressure and adhere to medical regimens as per the advice
of the doctor to manage health disorders such as hypertension and diabetes.
• Psychiatry: DPR helps in good therapeutic outcomes in the field of psychiatry.
The psychiatrist–patient relationship enables psychosomatic patients to
overcome the mental symptoms through better rapport with them. Studies have
revealed that the psychiatric symptoms in HIV patients are treated by retaining
patient’s hope and giving adequate data regarding the disease and treatment.
Termination of DPR
Innumerable situations might bring about a physician’s discharge of patients and the
ending of DPR. The relationship may come to an end when:
• the physician concludes that the patient needs the care of different specialists;
• successive missing of appointments by the patient;
• the physician refuses treatment due to nationality, religion, and other causes;
• neglecting a patient from prompt professional care without making
arrangements for the continuance of such care (patient abandonment).
Nowadays, in some places, practices like corruption in the health management
industry, inequity in healthcare delivery, and mushrooming of health insurance have
altered the relationship between the doctor and the patient. Overcoming these factors
will help to restore this decaying relationship.
Euthanasia and the concept of Living Will
Euthanasia is a compound of two Greek words -eu and thanatos -meaning literally. a
good death'. Today, 'euthanasia' is generally understood to mean the bringing about of
a good death-mercy killing. This understanding of euthanasia emphasises two
important features of acts of euthanasia. First, that euthanasia involves the deliberate
taking of a person's life: and, second, that life is taken for the sake of the person
whose life it is typically because she or he is suffering from an incurable or terminal
disease.
Euthanasia can be in three forms:- Voluntary, Non-voluntary and Involuntary
euthanasia
Euthanasia can be Voluntary when a person is no longer competent to assert her wish
to die when her life is ended. So, they ask for help with dying, they want to turned off
their medical treatment, they also refuse to eat, they don’t the burdens of the
medicines on them, they just simply want to die.
Euthanasia is Non-voluntary when the person whose life is ended cannot take
decisions between life and death for herself- for example, when the person is
handicapped infant, a person is in coma, a person is mentally retarded etc, in that case
the decision is taken by their family or by the doctor.
Euthanasia can be Involuntary when the life of the person is taken without the
consent of the patients, even though he/she wishes to live. Some of the people also
criticise it for murder. But in many situations the doctor has to do it. For example, a
soldier has their stomach blown open by a shell burst. They are in great pain and
screaming in agony. They beg the army doctor to save their life. The doctor knows
that they will die in ten minutes whatever happens. As he has no painkilling drugs
with him he decides to spare the soldier further pain and shoots them dead.
Active and Passive Euthanasia or Positive and Negative Euthanasia
Active euthanasia entails the active injection of a material that will cause cessation of
functions that are required to continue the life. For example, injecting a large dose of
morphine will cause cessation of respiration and injection of potassium chloride will
cause arrhythmias and cardiac arrest. In most countries, this is considered criminal
misconduct on the part of the doctor and generally brought to courts.
Passive euthanasia entails the withholding or non-performance of an action that
would have saved that person. This can be elaborated by not allowing for the patient
to be intubated, given oxygen, pushed in a drug that would resuscitate that person.
These options can be opted by the patient or by consensus of the medical team. The
patient can write up a living will or appoint a health care proxy asking for a “DNR”
or “Do Not Revive” order. This is legally binding. Or else the healthcare team can
discuss and get the consent of the legal guardian or the patient as to do nothing during
the next emergency. This is accepted in most countries, but in some, the legality is
blurry, at best.
Actions and omissions/ killing and letting die
To shoot someone is an action: to fall to help the victim of a shooting is an omission.
A shoots B and B dies. A has killed B, C does nothing to save B’s life. C lets B die.
But not all actions or omissions that result in a person's death are of central interest in
the euthanasia debate. The euthanasia debate is concerned with intentional actions
and omissions - that is, with deaths that are deliberately and knowingly brought about
in a situation where the agent could have done otherwise - that is, where A could have
refrained from killing B. and where C could have saved B's life.
Media Ethics – Privacy
Media are the communication channels or instruments used in mass communication
to transmit and store information or data. The phrase describes facets of the mass
media communications sector, including print media, publishing, news media,
photography, film, broadcasting (radio and television), digital media, and advertising.
Going public: What is an invasion of privacy?
A photograph that had been obtained without the permission of the person is clearly
wrong. This would be the case if, for instance, the photographer had trespassed on
private property to take the picture or a photograph lawfully taken (say by friends of
the couple) had been stolen by the newspaper. There might be a worry about
permissibility if the photograph had been obtained clandestinely, that is, without its
subjects knowing that it was being taken. 'Clandestine' also means 'underhand' and
'surreptitious', suggesting that the secrecy involved was somehow wrong or unfair.
The wrongness, we will assume, is not of a kind already discussed. It could be that
the subjects of the photograph not only did not know they were being photographed
but might reasonably expect not to have been photographed. If photographing the
picture was a part of a pattern of overt, persistent, and invasive harassment of the
person in it, publishing it can be considered inappropriate. An unreasonable
photographer would pursue his subject day and night, never allowing her out of his
sight, and taking pictures of her every move. It is appropriate for such behaviour to
be the focus of a court-issued order to stop.
Privacy has to do with keeping personal information non-public or undisclosed.
Personal information is that set of facts about oneself that a person does not wish to
see disclosed or made public. The facts need not take the form of written statements.
Personal information is contained within or can be inferred from a photograph or
sound recording. Obviously what one person strives to keep private another may be
happy to see as common knowledge. Some of us are shy about revealing our age,
others unembarrassed. Most of us would probably think of our sexual and financial
affairs as properly private.
The public figure as not entitled to privacy
To become a public person is to undergo a change in one's status, associated with
which is a lesser degree of privacy. On the first understanding of the claim it is said
that whatever bears on your public role ceases to be properly private; on the second
understanding it is said that a public person is less private simply in virtue of his or
her public status. One set of considerations that appears to speak in favour of the non
privacy of public persons has to do with fairness. The idea is that it is somehow only
fit and proper that public persons should not have privacy. There is a general version
of this thought and one specifically having to do with the role of publicity. The
general argument is that a loss of privacy is the fair price a famous person pays for
her fame. The rewards of fame are large - wealth, social status, public recognition,
power and influence, and so on.
A loss of Privacy as serving the public interest
The idea that, in fairness or by agreement, public status comes with a loss of privacy
is unpersuasive. Far more persuasive is the thought that a person's privacy may be
breached if the information disclosed serves a proven public interest. A code of press
practice may specify the various conditions that could count as involving a genuine
public interest in publication, such as detecting or exposing crime, protecting public
health, preventing the public from being misled. Showing public officials to be
corrupt, grossly inefficient, criminally negligent, or dishonest is certainly in the
public interest, provided that these failings bear directly on their performance of their
public duties.
Gossip and the interest of the public
Normally a clear distinction is made between a story being in the public
interest and a story being one that interests the public, and the latter is quickly
dismissed as a good reason for publication. Gossip should not then be condemned out
of hand for the wrong reasons. It would also be a mistake to ignore the possibly
valuable social purposes served by gossip. Three such purposes - bearing obvious
relationships to one another - which have been noted in anthropological studies of
gossip. The first is that gossip plays a role in defining a community and maintaining
its unity. The second and probably most important purpose gossip can serve has to do
with the shared values of the community in which it is conducted. The third purpose
gossip serves is an egalitarian one. Gossip demystifies the pretensions of public
status; it can expose the ordinariness of the famous by showing them to be no more
and no less capable of avoiding the failings we know ourselves to display all too
often.
Artificial Intelligence
Al is one of the new elds in science and engineering. It was developed after World
War II, and the term was coined in 1956. Along with molecular biology, Al is known
to be a very innovative eld by scientists in many branches. While the research work
has been conducted in principle branches of science. AI on the other hand still has
much potential for more development.
De nition of AI
Four approaches have been adopted by different people with different methods.
They are:
Thinking Humanly
"The exciting new effort to make comput ers think... machines with minds, in the full
and literal sense." (Haugeland, 1985)
"[The automation of] activities that we associate with human thinking, activities such
as decision-making, problem solv ing, learning..." (Bellman, 1978)
1. Acting Humanly
"The art of creating machines that per form functions that require intelligence when
performed by people." (Kurzweil, 1990)
"The study of how to make computers do things at which, at the moment, people are
better." (Rich and Knight, 1991)
1. Thinking Rationally
"The study of mental faculties through the use of computational models." (Charniak
and McDermott, 1985)
"The study of the computations that make it possible to perceive, reason, and act."
(Winston, 1992)
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Acting Rationally
"Computational Intelligence is the study of the design of intelligent agents." (Poole et
al., 1998)
"AI... is concerned with intelligent be havior in artifacts." (Nilsson, 1998)
1. The Turing test
The Turing Test, proposed by Alan Turing (1950), was designed to provide a
reasonable working de nition of intelligence. A computer is said to pass the test when
a human who is investigating cannot tell the difference whether the text was written
by a human or a computer. For that to happen the computer would needs to possess
the following capabilities:
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⚫ natural language processing to enable it to communicate successfully
⚫ Knowledge representation is used to describe what the system knows or hear
⚫ automated reasoning uses the knowledge to get answers and generate new
hypotheses
⚫ machine learning is used to adjust to changing conditions and to recognise and
extrapolate trends
There is a version of test called the total Turing Test which includes a video signal so
that the interrogator can test the subject's perception [Link] pass the total Turing
Test, the computer will need:
⚫ a vision to see objects, and
⚫ robotics to move objects and themselves.
These six disciplines encompass most of AI, and Turing deserves credit for designing
a test that remains relevant 60 years later. Yet AI researchers say that the
understanding and development of AI is more important than passing test.
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2. The Cognitive modelling approach
The interdisciplinary eld of cognitive science brings together computer models
from AI and experimental techniques from psychology to construct precise and
testable theories of the human mind.
Cognitive science is a captivating eld. Real cognitive science, however, is
necessarily based on experimental investigation of actual humans or animals.
Earlier there was much confusion between the two approaches: an author would
argue that an algorithm performs well on a task and that it is therefore a good model
of human performance, or vice versa. Modern authors however have separated the
two kinds of claims: which has allowed both AI and cognitive science to develop
more rapidly. The two elds continue to fertilise each other, most notably in computer
vision, which incorporates neurophysiological evidence into computational models.
3. The Law approach
Logicians found ways to write all statements around them in precise notions among
them
The logical programs solvers existed that could solve any problem described in
logical notation. This so-called logicist tradition within arti cial intelligence hopes to
build on such programs to create intelligent systems
There are two problems with this approach:
First, it is not easy to take informal knowledge and state it in the formal terms
Second, there is a huge gap between solving a problem "in principle" and solving it
in practice. ny computer unless it has some guidance as to which reasoning steps to
try rst. Although both of these obstacles apply to any attempt to build computational
reasoning systems, they appeared rst in the logicist tradition.
4 . The rational agent approach
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A rational agent is one that acts so as to achieve the best outcome and when there is
uncertainty, the best closest outcome.
In the "laws of thought" approach to Al, the emphasis was on correct inferences.
because one way to act rationally is to reason logically to the conclusion that a given
action will achieve one's goals and then to act on that conclusion. On the other hand,
correct inference is not all of rationality; in some situations, there is no provably
correct thing to do, but something must still be done. There are also ways of acting
rationally that cannot be said to involve inference.
All the skills needed for the Turing Test also allow an agent to act rationally.
Knowledge representation and reasoning enable agents to reach good decisions. We
need to be able to generate comprehensible sentences in natural language to get by in
a complex society.
The rational-agent approach has two advantages over the other approaches:
First, it is more general than the "laws of thought" approach because correct
inference is just one of several possible mechanisms for achieving rationality.
Second, it is more amenable to make scienti c amends based on human behaviour
approach.
The foundations of Arti cial Intelligence
Philosophy
Aristotle formulate a precise set of laws governing the rational part of the mind. He
developed an informal system of syllogisms for proper reasoning, Ramon Lull (d.
1315) had the idea that useful reasoning could actually be carried out by a mechanical
artifact. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) proposed that reasoning was like numerical
computation. Around 1500, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) designed a mechanical
calculator which could have been functional. The rst known calculating machine
was constructed around 1623 by the German scientist Wilhelm Schickard
(1592-1635), but the Pascaline, built in 1642 by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).
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René Descartes (1596-1650) gave the rst clear discussion of the distinction between
mind and matter and of the problems that arise. Descartes was a strong advocate of
the power of reasoning in understanding the world, a philosophy now called
rationalism, and one that counts Aristotle and Leibnitz as members. But Descartes
was also a proponent of dualism. He held that there is a part of the human mind (or
soul or spirit) that is outside of nature, exempt from physical laws. Animals, on the
other hand, did not possess this dual quality; they could be treated as machines. An
alternative to dualism is materialism, which holds that the brain's operation according
to the laws of physics constitutes the mind.
The empiricism movement, starting with Francis Bacon's (1561 1626) Novum
Organum, is characterized by a dictum of John Locke (1632-1704): "Nothing is in the
understanding, which was not rst in the senses." David Hume's (1711-1776) A
Treatise of Human Nature (Hume, 1739) proposed what is now known as the
principle of induction.
The nal element in the philosophical picture of the mind is the connection between
knowledge and action. Aristotle argued (in De Motu Animalium) that actions are
justi ed by a logical connection between goals and knowle dge of the action's
outcome.
Aristotle's algorithm was implemented 2300 years later by Newell and Simon in their
GPS program. We would now call it a regression planning system. John Stuart Mill's
(1806-1873) book Utilitarianism (Mill, 1863) promoted the idea of rational decision
criteria in all spheres of human activity. The more formal theory of decisions is
discussed in the following section.
Mathematics
A leap to a formal science required a level of mathematical formalization in three
fundamental areas: logic, computation, and probability.
1. Formal logic can be traced back to the philosophers of ancient Greece, its
mathematical development really began with the work of George Boole (1815-1864),
who worked out the details of propositional, or Boolean, logic (Boole. 1847).
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2. The next step was to determine the limits of what could be done with logic and
com putation. The word algorithm (and the idea of studying them) comes from al-
Khowarazmi, a Persian mathematician of the 9th century, whose writings also
introduced Arabic numerals and algebra to Europe. In 1931, Gödel showed that limits
on deduction do exist. His incompleteness theorem showed that in any formal theory
as strong as Peano arithmetic (the elementary theory of natural numbers), there are
true statements that are undecidable in the sense that they have no proof within the
theory.
This fundamental result can also be interpreted as showing that some functions on the
integers cannot be represented by an algorithm-that is, they cannot be computed. This
motivated Alan Turing (1912-1954) to try to characterize exactly which functions are
com putable capable of being computed but notion of a computation or effective
procedure really cannot be given a formal de nition.
Although decidability and computability are important to an understanding of
computa tion, the notion of tractability has had an even greater impact. Roughly
speaking, a problem is called intractable if the time required to solve instances of the
problem grows exponentially with the size of the instances.
The theory of NP-completeness, pio neered by Steven Cook (1971) and Richard Karp
(1972), provides a method. Cook and Karp . Any problems can be reduced is likely to
be intractable.
3. Besides logic and computation, the third great contribution of mathematics to AI is
the theory of probability. The Italian Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576) rst framed the
idea of probability, describing it in terms of the possible outcomes of gambling
events. James Bemoulli (1654-1705), Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), and others
advanced the theory and introduced new statistical meth ods.
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Economics
The science of economics got its start in 1776, when Scottish philosopher Adam
Smith (1723-1790) published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations. Smith was the rst to treat it as a science. The mathematical treatment of
"preferred outcomes" or utility was rst formalised by Léon Walras (pronounced
"Valrasse") (1834-1910) and was improved by Frank Ramsey (1931).
Decision theory, which combines probability theory with utility theory, provides a for
mal and complete framework for decisions (economic or otherwise) made under
uncertainty that is, in cases where probabilistic descriptions appropriately capture the
decision maker's environment.
Work in economics and operations research has contributed much to our notion of ra
tional agents, yet for many years Al research developed along entirely separate paths.
One reason was the apparent complexity of making rational decisions. Herbert Simon
(1916-2001) worked on models based on satis cing making decisions that are "good
enough," rather than laboriously calculating an optimal decision
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, particularly the brain. It has also
long been known that human brains are somehow different; in about 335 B.C.
Aristotle wrote, "Of all the animals, man has the largest brain in proportion to his
size.”
Paul Broca's (1824-1880) demonstrated the existence of localised areas of the brain
responsible for speci c cognitive functions. By that time, it was known that the brain
consisted of nerve cells, or neurons, but it was not until 1873 that Camillo Golgi
(1843-1926) developed a staining technique allowing the observation of individual
neurons in the brain.
The measurement of intact brain activity began in 1929 with the invention by Hans
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Berger of the electroencephalograph (EEG). The recent development of functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) (Ogawa et al., 1990; Cabeza and Nyberg, 2001)
is giving neu roscientists unprecedentedly detailed images of brain activity, enabling
measurements that correspond in interesting ways to ongoing cognitive processes.
Brains and digital computers have somewhat different properties. Computers have a
cycle time that is a million times faster than a brain. The brain makes up for that with
far more storage and interconnection than even a high-end personal computer,
although the largest supercomputers have a capacity that is similar to the brain’s.
Computer engineering
The computer has been the artifact of choice. The modem digital electronic computer
was in vented independently and almost simultaneously by scientists in three
countries embattled in World War II. The rst operational computer was the
electromechanical Heath Robinson, built in 1940 by Alan Turing's team for a single
purpose: deciphering German messages. In 1943, the same group developed the
Colossus, a powerful general-purpose machine based on vacuum tubes. The rst
operational programmable computer was the Z-3, the inven tion of Konrad Zuse in
Germany in 1941. The rst electronic computer, the ABC, was assembled by John
Atanasoff and his student Clifford Berry Iowa State University. It was the ENIAC,
developed as part of a secret military project at the University of Pennsylvania by a
team including John Mauchly and John Eckert, that proved to be the most in uential
forerunner of modern computers.
Performance doubled every 18 months or so until around 2005, when power
dissipation problems led manufacturers to start multiplying the number of CPU cores
rather than the clock speed. The rst pro grammable machine was a loom, devised in
1805 by Joseph Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), that used punched cards to store
instructions for the pattern to be woven. In the mid-19th century,. Charles Babbage
(1792-1871) designed two machines, neither of which he com pleted. Babbage's
colleague Ada Lovelace, daughter of the poet Lord. Byron, was perhaps the world's
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rst programmer. Work in AI has pioneered many ideas that have made their way
back to mainstream computer science, including time sharing, interactive interpreters,
personal computers with windows and mice, rapid development environments, the
linked list data type, automatic storage management, and key concepts of symbolic,
functional, declarative, and object-oriented programming.
Control theory and cybernetics
Ktesibios of Alexandria (c. 250 B.C.) built the rst self-controlling machine: a water
clock with a regulator that maintained a constant ow rate. This invention changed
the de nition of what an artifact could do.
The central gure in the creation of what is now called control theory was Norbert
Wiener (1894-1964). Wiener and his colleagues Arturo Rosenblueth and Julian
Bigelow challenged the behaviorist orthodoxy (Rosenblueth et al., 1943). They
viewed purposive behavior as aris ing from a regulatory mechanism trying to
minimize "error"-the difference between current state and goal state. Ashby's Design
for a Brain (1948, 1952) also elaborated on his idea that intelligence could be created
by the use of homeostatic devices containing appropriate feedback loops to achieve
stable adaptive behavior.
Modern control theory, especially the branch known as stochastic optimal control, has
as its goal the design of systems that maximize an objective function over time. The
tools of logical inference and computation allowed AI researchers to consider
problems such as language, vision, and planning that fell completely outside the
control theorist's purview.
Linguistics
B. F. Skinner published Verbal Behavior. Which was a comprehensive, detailed ac
count of the behaviorist approach to language learning, written by the foremost
expert in the eld. Noam Chomsky, published a book on his own theory, Syntactic-
Structures. Chomsky pointed out that the behaviorist theory did not address the
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notion of creativity in language it did not explain how a child could understand and
make up sentences that he or she had never heard before.
Modern linguistics and AI, then, were born at about the same time, and grew up
together, intersecting in a hybrid eld called computational linguistics or natural
language processing. Understanding language requires an understanding of the
subject matter and context. Much of the early work in knowledge representation was
tied to language and informed by research in linguistics, which was connected in turn
to decades of work on the philosophical analysis of language.
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