No Ghost in the Machine - The American Scholar

It is desirable to guard against the possibility of exaggerated ideas that might arise as to the powers of the Analytical Engine. In considering any new subject, there is frequently a tendency, first, to overrate what we find to be already interesting or remarkable; and, secondly, by a sort of natural reaction, to undervalue the true state of the case, when we do discover that our notions have surpassed those that were really tenable. The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us in making available what we are already acquainted with. The first words uttered on a controversial subject can rarely be taken as the last, but this comment by British mathematician Lady Lovelace, who died in 1852, is just that--the basis of our understanding of what computers are and can be, including the notion that they might come to acquire artificial intelligence, which here means "strong AI," or the ability to think in the fullest sense of the word. Her words demand and repay close reading: the computer "can do whatever we know how to order it to perform." This means both that it can do only what we know how to instruct it to do, and that it can do all that we know how to instruct it to do.