XAI

In the spring of 1722, a 16-year-old apprentice in a Boston print shop began slipping letters under the door at night, signed by a middle-aged widow named Silence Dogood, who did not exist. The apprentice was Benjamin Franklin. His brother James, who owned the paper, had no intention of printing his kid brother, so Franklin invented a woman and let her say the things he couldn’t. Readers wrote in guessing at the author. No one suspected the boy sweeping the floor. Franklin would go on to be a printer, a postmaster, a scientist famous across Europe for his electrical experiments and a founder of libraries, fire companies and, in time, of the United States itself.

In the 1966 novel Colossus by British author D.F. Jones, a supercomputer (which goes by the name of Colossus) is given control and decision-making power over the US’s nuclear arsenal – a logical and unemotional computer being better placed, it is assumed, to make unemotional decisions than a human. Eventually, Colossus discovers the existence of a similar supercomputer in the USSR and begins communicating with its Russian counterpart in mathematical languages about technological advances beyond human comprehension. Frightened by the possibilities this presents, scientists sever the connection – only for Colossus to threaten to launch nuclear weapons if it isn’t reconnected.