This year’s Edge question is “What do you think about machines that think?” My response is less about their likelihood and more about how we should respond, as a society, if this ever comes to pass. Specifically, it involves naches , the Yiddish term for pride and joy:
So how shall we respond? One response is to mark these machines as monsters, unspeakable horrors that can examine the unknown in ways that we cannot. And I think many people might respond this way if and when we birth machines that think about the world in wildly foreign ways from our own.
But it needn’t be so. I prefer a more optimistic response, that of naches. Naches is a Yiddish term that means joy and pride, and it’s often used in the context of vicarious pride, taken from others’ accomplishments. You have naches, or as is said in Yiddish, you shep naches, when your children graduate college or get married, or any other instance of vicarious pride. These aren’t your own accomplishments, but you can still have a great deal of pride and joy in them.
And the same thing is true with our machines. We might not understand their thoughts or discoveries or technological advances. But they are our machines and we can have naches from them.
Read the rest here.
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