THE SEARCH

colleges and universities of the nation CBS television brings you the search the search to know and understand man and his work the search for a richer happier life for all I'm Charles Romine this is a report on a revolution in machine this is professor Donald B Campbell of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a leading authority on automatic machines and processes for the next half hour professor Campbell will be our guide as we take you on a cross-country tour of laboratories in plants that are pioneering in the development of new robot machines right now we are in the north grafton massachusetts plant of the wyman gordon company professor what is that mammoth machine right over there it's called the big squeeze it's one of the two largest hydraulic presses in the United States what do they use it for they forged aluminum parts for airplanes and magnesium parts it squeezes the metal together like so much cookie dough the total pressure is about 18,000 tons that's 36 million pounds wow I never would have believed it I guess that represents the revolution in machines bigger more powerful machines no that's not quite right these new manats machines for all their force don't do anything except be perhaps more efficient than old machines did for all their power they are simply a replacement of man's muscles the important thing to keep in mind is that all of these machines are performing purely mechanical functions they are the dinosaurs the Apes then the and earth all men in the world of machines big squeeze here is just another one of them it's simply bigger but recently an important change is taking place in the machine an important and big change machines are going through an evolution they are becoming more than merely muscles now let's go back to MIT and see how these machines are evolving all right what on earth is that well hey that's Felix Felix what what is he a pet or a mascot here at MIT well you could call him a pet at the Institute he doesn't greet everybody that way in fact he's not greeting you at all he's just looking for some sunlight felix is a device that shows how machine can take over one of the human senses vision he is a machine that represents an advance in evolution oh there's professor Weiner professor Weiner is an internationally famous mathematician who supplied many of the basic ideas that allowed this field of automatic control to develop Judas I've just seen an amazing demonstration out here and I'd like to ask you a couple of questions about the dome fine just a moment ago I saw a demonstration of an amazing machine Felix the more how did you build Felix as a toy or certainly not as a demonstration piece he's been jazzed up for movie purposes and had a certain amount of beauty treatment but he's fundamentally an instrument to examine how such machines behave what kind of a machine really is Felix well Felix is primarily a hastily put together show machine to show what one can do with the torment of these days of a very different sort of the old fashioned automata of the eighteenth century you know those figures that dance around on the top of the music box has ever occurred to you that they are blind stupid there's they go through a set pattern and they don't perceive anything and they'd nothing that happens outside will change what they do well Felix is different first he isn't blind and second he's got something that you can call a crude brain now when I say he isn't blind he's got a very curious sort of an eye or pair of eyes he isn't made to see images but he is made to perceive like a lot of the primitive animals have eyes like that but in addition to that he balances the light for the two eyes and the change in balance the light is collected by photoelectric cells moves the rudder that steers him toward the light what about the other senses dr. Weiner are you building in other human senses into these new robot machines well let's take hearing we have already guided missiles that is sonic torpedoes would chase after the sound of a ship would you say that machine becoming smarter and smarter yes we're making them smarter and smarter we're building into the better memories we're building into them the possibility of learning and those things are happening very fast by that do you mean that we have machines that actually think the word think is one of the words like life and so on and so which are bad words they mean just what we want them to me but i would say that we have machines which if there were to be for the first time discovered by an animal psychologist would be said to think in the way that animals do yes we're now reporting from the digital computer laboratory at MIT well this is Jay Forrester director of the laboratory mr. Forrester what part of the laboratory we in right now this is the control room for the whole in digital computer is this the entire machine right here no the whirlwind computer itself is in the room next door what were when used for Poland is used for scientific and engineering research and for studies on various military problems it's one of the most versatile and fastest machines that's been built and will carry out about 25,000 arithmetic operations a second to give you an idea of the speed let's consider multiplying together two numbers take for example three 1946 x 2 7 189 all right after that was a very short fraction of a second to get that answer well you see in 15 minutes whirlwind can carry out the solution to a problem that would take a person at a desk calculating machine 15 years to do tell me how does whirlwind compare in regard to making errors with us human well it might give you an idea if you would consider one of these multiplications as equal to dialing a phone number and then realize that the machine makes and there are only as frequently as would be equal to people dialing one wrong phone number in this country every two years how does it communicate its answer to it Oh Harlan has several ways of communicating with us one way is to record information on those roles of magnetic tape over there when it's finished with a problem on tape the tape is used to control the typewriter on the other side of the room and that gives us a page of printed information Paul wind also can record engineering curves on a cathode ray tube face something like a television set and this gives us potted results that are easier to understand than a page of numbers well after watching a whirlwind in operation it seems it has a high degree of mental activity now would you call that electronic thinking mr. Forrester well I'd be careful about the use of the word thinking after all a machine like this only carries out the instructions that men prepare for it well now we've seen machines withdrawn and machines with fences and right here machines that almost think is the next step of putting them all together not quite I think we have the important field of control that you ought to look into dr. Brown I understand that you are the head of the electrical engineering department and I'd like to ask you a question or two we've just seen the electronic brain at mr. Forrester's laboratory and I'd like to know what can these electronic brains do other than remember obey orders and so on these brains these memory devices can perform very clever functions when they are made part of automatic control systems but only provided these automatic control systems have the feature that we like to call feedback feedback now that's a very interesting word what exactly does it mean what is feedback well I would like to explain feedback to you in terms of a very simple very commonplace everyday experience now supposing that we assume that we are in a school rule we have a text and we have a teacher and the teacher knows what the text has in it and what the student is supposed to learn now if there is no feedback the teacher has a very poor way of telling whether the student understands this is why in schools our children are supposed are required to take a quiz because it is by means of the quiz that the teacher can tell how well the student understands it is the feedback feature by means of the quiz that makes our educational process even partially effective but outside the classroom feedback can perform a very important function in mechanisms because it is by means of feedback that automatic control machines can perform self-regulating operations do you mean by that that it's certain situations these machines can react all by themselves Oh suddenly they certainly can and let me show you a model of a device that we find frequently on our ocean-going liners now we have here an experimental rig that is intended to show how a vessel might steer itself shown forward of the mast is a magnetic a gyro compass and assume that the vessel changes its direction by a degree or sell such as would happen in heavy seas with strong winds I suppose that's right exactly now just watch as it moves off course the gyro compass picks up information gives the signal through the steering motor the steering motor in turn will control the position of the rudder then if the vessel were in the water and able to move as it moves forward it would come back onto course and the gyro compass would cancel out the signal oh so that's why it's called feedback because it feeds back the information necessary to correct itself right exactly the gyro compass detects and continuously monitors the desired heading and whenever it detects an error in the desired heading it gives the instructions that will permit the ship to correct itself that's pretty ingenious Oh ingenious but rather commonplace now feedback in weapons plays a very vital role feedback is found in many places throughout the device in the top-secret guided missiles the radar signal is the feedback link to the nervous system of the missile tells the nervous system whether it has aimed the missile in the direction that will permit it to destroy the target now I've seen machines that are muscle machines sense organs electronic brains and have feedback now tell me is this the ultimate in what you can put into a machine is this the ultimate machine well so here you've raised the sixty four dollar question that interests all people interested in control I would rather say that we have developed some rather clever machines they are valuable and useful machines but we have a long way to go before we will have developed an automatic machine that can replace the human being our machines today are simple they really cannot think but we are making some progress in the direction of learning what we might be able to do to machines in order that they do some elementary thinking and I would suggest that you go and have a talk with dr. claude shannon at the bell telephone laboratories or I consider him one of the leaders in studies of this general character dr. Shannon we understand that you've made many highly important contributions to the science of communications and the right now you're working on some machines that learn now I presume that this could be one of them is this an experiment of yours that looks very much like a little mouse is it amount it's not a real ly of mouse actually it's a little mechanical mouse which is controlled by computing machine one of the classic experiments of psychology as you know is out of putting a mouse that is a live mouse and amazed and seeing how long it takes to solve the maze what we have here is an attempt to simulate this type of behavior by means of the computing machine in other words to build a machine which will solve problems by trial and error and then remember the solution after its found it you see the maze can be changed by moving the partitions around in any way that you choose perhaps you'd like to present a new problem to the mouth by rearranging the petition somewhat all right I'll try and confuse him a little I think I'll move this one right over here and perhaps this one now this one here I'm almost as confused as a mouse thinking and this one right here how's that do you think that'll confuse them well let's try it and see suppose that I put them off down on this square to start with now the way you set this up it'll have to go around this pal through here around here and back to this grass knob in the corner which of course represents the cheese just for fun why don't you take your watch in time and see how long it takes him to find his way to the goal ok we'll we'll clock them 52 seconds yes he made quite a number of mistakes why don't you put him down the same starting point and see if he's learned anything all right well 17 seconds that's pretty amazing how did he do it well like all these computing machines it's rather complex actually the brains of this mouse are down underneath the panel let me show you the inside of the machine actually the mouse here is a permanent magnet it's pulled around by this electromagnet here which can move on wheels underneath the cover of the maze the electromagnet in turn is driven by two electric motors which are controlled by a miniature computing machine well one thing I'd like to know is that why the first time did he make every conceivable mistake it seems so and the second time went through with no trouble well part of the computing machine consists of a bank of about 50 relays which act as a memory for the machine when the mouse goes through the first time it locates the partitions makes a metal note in these relays of the positions of these partitions second time through it avoids all the mistakes that made the first time well know what do you expect to discover with devices like this well machines of this general sort are very similar to the type circuits we use in our automatic telephone work by exploring the possibilities here we hope to improve telephone service further we hope to possibly learn something about the general design principles of machines that learn and if we're lucky maybe we'll learn something about that most remarkable learning machine of them all a human brain we're back at MIT in the servomechanism laboratory professor Campbell what's the next stage in our evolution of machines we can combine electronic brains with machines that do useful work combined brains and brawn mr. o mine mr. McDonough hi honey are you mr. McDonough and mr. Pease a former professor at MIT worked together on the research and development of this machine oh well you're the one to ask mr. McDonough exactly what does this machine do well this is an automatic milling machine it makes many parts such as the forming dyes that are used in manufacturer of aircraft and by other industries it often does in a few hours what it takes a skilled machinist several days to do it's controlled by the computing machine which you might call an electronic brain here's where the machine is receiving its instructions you'll recognize the tape as being similar to that it's used at the whirlwind machine the metal pins come up through the tape and actually feel the pattern of holes now over here we have the electronic equipment that actually controls the motion of the machine the first panel controls the motion of the table the second panel controls the motion of the tool up and down and the last panel controls the motion of the tool in and out all of these are to a precision of one or two thousandth of an inch does this machine perform all those operations automatically yes it reads the list of numbers that were recorded on the tape and performs the machine operations in the proper sequence right now the polls on a tape or telling the machine to spell out CBS TV now does this give us an idea of what we can expect in the future yes several industrial firms are now building equipment of this sort and other plants are visiting us to find out more about technique and see what they can learn about it well I suppose the automatic machine represents the peak of machine evolution it's a complete robot that's what you're looking for isn't it well we're not after the kind of automatic machines you read about in science fiction tales we want a more sophisticated kind of automatic machine a kind of machine that is a complete production service system an automatic machine that is an organism a community of machines a combination of instruments an automatic machinery and of course the ultimate in this will be when men do not control the individual machines but when instead they control complete arrays of machines arranged into complete automatic production plans sort of automatic factories that what you mean well you could call it that are there any such factories in existence today certainly and a Ford Motor Company engine plant they have automatic machines that can turn out whole cylinder blocks with a minimum of human control there are also automatic machines that can grind crank shafts to predetermine dimensions now isn't this just the very thing that brings about this feeling of fear of machines that the feeling that factories of the future will run themselves that people won't be needed it will be unused and useless you know that's a question I believe you ought to ask the president of MIT dr. Killian I feel that we have nothing to fear from the use of new machines provided we use them understandingly and in a benign manner what do you mean to say dr. Killian that automatic factories will employ just as many people as present-day factories do I think that they will perhaps employ more when we consider their impact on other kinds of industry in this country the history of technology and industry has been that it has tended to increase employment over the long period rather than to decrease it certainly there will be disruptions from time to time there will be shifts in the kind of work that people do there will be changes in industry but I am certain that in the long run new technology of the kind that you've been demonstrating here will result in better employment and more employment in the United States what will be the result of the automatic Factory in reference to the worker this new breed of machines well unquestionably require a new breed of professional man a new breed of engineers we will require men who not only have a profound education technically but who have a breadth of education that enables them to understand the social forces created by the machine this of course is where the university's come in for an institution such as MIT has a very great responsibility we must make sure that in preparing men to undertake professional responsibilities in the age of automatic machines that we must have an educational program that will give them a breadth of understanding of social forces that will in the words of Norbert Wiener help them contribute to the human use of human beings Oh