I, Robot - Isaac Asimov [94]
Not all the changes of the past decades had yet altered the fact that the North was the economic ruler of the planet.
There was almost an ostentatious symbolism thereof in the fact that of the official Regional maps Byerley had seen, Mackenzie’s alone showed all the Earth, as though the North feared no competition and needed no favoritism to point up its pre-eminence.
“Impossible,” said Mackenzie, dourly, over the whiskey. “Mr. Byerley, you have had no training as a robot technician, I believe.”
“No, I have not.”
“Hmp. Well, it is, in my opinion, a sad thing that Ching, Ngoma and Szegeczowska haven’t either. There is too prevalent an opinion among the peoples of Earth that a Co-ordinator need only be a capable organizer, a broad generalizer, and an amiable person. These days he should know his robotics as well,—no offense intended.”
“None taken. I agree with you.”
“I take it, for instance, from what you have said already, that you worry about the recent trifling dislocation in world economy. I don’t know what you suspect, but it has happened in the past that people—who should have known better—wondered what would happen if false data were fed into the Machine.”
“And what would happen, Mr. Mackenzie?”
“Well,” the Scotsman shifted his weight and sighed, “all collected data goes through a complicated screening system which involves both human and mechanical checking, so that the problem is not likely to arise. —But let us ignore that. Humans are fallible, also corruptible, and ordinary mechanical devices are liable to mechanical failure.
“The real point of the matter is that what we call a ‘wrong datum’ is one which is inconsistent with all other known data. It is our only criterion of right and wrong. It is the Machine’s as well. Order it, for instance, to direct agricultural activity on the basis of an average July temperature in Iowa of 57 degrees Fahrenheit. It won’t accept that. It will not give an answer. —Not that it has any prejudice against that particular temperature, or that an answer is impossible; but because, in the light of all the other data fed it over a period of years, it knows that the probability of an average July temperature of 57 is virtually nil. It rejects that datum.
“The only way a ‘wrong datum’ can be forced on the Machine is to include it as part of a self-consistent whole, all of which is subtly wrong in a manner either too delicate for the Machine to detect or outside the Machine’s experience. The former is beyond human capacity, and the latter is almost so, and is becoming more nearly so as the Machine’s experience increases by the second.”
Stephen Byerley placed two fingers to the bridge of his nose, “Then the Machine cannot be tampered with— And how do you account for recent errors, then?”
“My dear Byerley, I see that you instinctively follow that great error—that the Machine knows all. Let me cite you a case from my personal experience. The cotton industry engages experienced buyers who purchase cotton. Their procedure is to pull a tuft of cotton out of a random bale of a lot. They will look at that tuft and feel it, tease it out, listen to the crackling perhaps as they do so, touch it with their tongue,—and through this procedure they will determine the class of cotton the bales represent. There are about a dozen such classes. As a result of their decisions, purchases are made at certain prices, blends are made in certain proportions. —Now these buyers cannot yet be replaced by the Machine.”
“Why not? Surely the data involved is not too complicated for it?”
“Probably not. But what data is this you refer to? No textile chemist knows exactly what it is that the buyer tests when he feels a tuft of cotton. Presumably there’s the average length of the threads, their feel, the extent and nature of their slickness, the way they hang together, and so on. —Several dozen items, subconsciously weighed, out of years of experience. But the quantitative nature of these tests is not known; maybe even the very nature of some of them is not known. So we have nothing to feed the Machine. Nor