Receptors

John L. Casti The Cambridge Quintet: A Work of Scientific Speculation is a dialogue that gathers some thinkers round the theme of machine intelligence. Casti has the character Turing pick up on the character Haldane's insistence that "Sensory inputs to the brain do matter" thus

[...] Must we duplicate human sennsory apparatus? Is it necessary to give the machine a sense of taste, touch and smell? Or is it enough for it just to be able to see and hear? And if we do have to create a machine version of these five senses somehow, why should we not think of any of these human senses are not themselves computational processes?

Cross-reference with Chandler Burr The Emperor of Scent: a story of perfume, obsession, and the last mystery of the senses

And so for day 519
15.05.2008