INDIVIDUAL -A.I.S- INDULGES : PRECIS MIND

'' Individual A.I.'s do pose real danger, given the ability to aggregate power in the pursuit of a goal, '' Professor Dennis Yi Tenen concedes.

But the real danger comes '' from our inability to hold technology makers responsible for their actions.'' '' What if someone wanted to strap a jet engine to a car and see how it fared on the streets of a crowded city?

Tenen says the answer is obvious : '' Don't do that.''

WHY '' Don't do that '' can seem easy in one realm but not another requires more thinking, more precision, more scrutiny - all qualities that fall by the wayside when we cower before A.I., treating the technology like a singular god instead of a multiplicity of machines built by a multiplicity of humans.

Professor Tenen leads by example, bringing his human intelligence to bear on artificial intelligence. By thinking through our collective habits of thought, he offers a meditation all his own.

[ Book Review : Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write. By Dennis Yi Tenen. ]