p The problem of the social consequences of cybernetising production has been of interest to society ever since the time of Karel Capek, the creatures of whose imagination (thinking machines, or robots, as he called them) end up by destroying people. Since then the great advances in automation and electronics have produced a large number of works in the West which paint a tragic picture of the future: either “intelligent automats" decide that the further existence of mankind on earth is superfluous or mankind destroys its cybernetic progeny and degenerates to the level of troglodytes, or it finds itself in the position of the “inferior race" in a machine society.

p These ideas have long since ceased to be the property of science-fiction and are now seriously discussed by many Western philosophers, economists and sociologists. “I am troubled by terrible visions,” wrote Nikolai Berdyaev as far back as 1933, “the time will come when machines will be so perfect that they will act without any help from man, machines will take over the whole universe ... and the last people, having become useless, unable to breathe and live in this technological environment, will disappear, leaving behind them a new universe created by their reason and their hands."  [293•2 

p Certain Western sociologists supplement this picture with fears of the degradation and destruction of people, whom “thinking machines" doom to all sorts of humiliating work or 294 simply kill mercilessly. The American scientist Robert Bowie, for example, sees the chief threat to humanity not in a nuclear war, but in “an interconnected computer system, which will acquire a consciousness of its own existence and a desire for its own enhancement”, but “our dependence upon the system will be such that we dare not shut it off".  [294•1 

p The total inconsistency of such views is convincingly demonstrated by the eminent English physiologist W. Grey Walter. “As a child frightened by a teased puppy will say he met a bear,” he writes, “so we tend to project into these docile slaves of the laboratory our feelings of guilt, apprehension, inferiority and insignificance. In fact they are domestic servants as truly the friend of man as arc the dogs and horses he has fashioned from the raw material of animal species."  [294•2 

p A. C. Clarke is also of the same opinion and points out that people are applying their laws of the jungle to the world in which such laws simply do not exist.  [294•3 

p Some Western sociologists go to the other extreme, maintaining that robots will liberate man entirely from mental and physical work. Criticising this point of view, Norbert Wiener emphasised: “...The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will’ offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking."  [294•4 

p The problem of “man and the machine" is becoming more acute in the capitalist world because the rapid development of computer technology is threatening mass unemployment not only for the factory worker but also for the mental worker. It has become particularly topical in the last few years when electronic machines have begun to be used increasingly widely in economic management. One now hears warnings about the undesirable social consequences of the “cybernetisation of society”.

p David L. Johnson of the University of Washington and Arthur L. Kobler, a Seattle psychologist, maintain, for example, that hasty introduction of computers in all spheres 295 of human activity produces the tendency to hand over to them the solution of complex social problems which are equated, as it were, with ordinary technological problems, the tendency to avoid taking one’s own decisions, to avoid responsibility, and gives rise to the psychological “ adaptation" of one’s own assessments to machine computations with dangerous oversimplification of complex sets of problems. Apart from this, the speed of operation of electronic devices is so fast that man does not have time to fully understand the results obtained and take the right decision in critical cases. “The need for caution,” Johnson and Kobler conclude, “will be greater in the future. Until we can determine more perfectly what we want from the machines, let us not call on mechanised decision systems to act upon human systems without realistic human processing. As we proceed with the inevitable development of computers and artificial intelligence, let us be sure we know what we are doing."  [295•1 

p Norbert Wiener also warns that we must not place our hopes on machines alone to solve the complex problems on which the fate of mankind may depend, for machines can take wrong, uncontrolled decisions. Although they are theoretically subject to human critical analysis, because of the tremendous speed at which they perform operations it may happen that analysis produces the necessary results long after the time when they could still influence the course of events. “Render unto man the things which are man’s and unto the computer the things which are the computer’s,"  [295•2  the founder of cybernetics concludes.

p In order to produce an “intelligent machine”, a “machine sapiens”, to quote A. C. Clarke, expensive improvement processes are required. This, according to a number of bourgeois scientists, confronts mm kind with a moral question: on whose teaching is it best to spend money—teaching machines or teaching people? The American scientist P. J. van Heerden believes that in the next fifty years mankind will be faced with the need either to spend money on training machines to perform tirelessly in very demanding 296 jobs, or to educate children to have the satisfaction of achievement in the same. “I hope,” concludes the author, “that it will not he difficult to choose in favour of mankind."  [296•1 

p This problem advanced by van Heerden is yet another illustration of the blind alley in which the capitalist world finds itself when confronted by cybernetisation. In socialist society even the framing of such a question is radically different, because in determining the outlook for the development of cybernetics the main point of departure here is the requirements of society itself, which dictate the most rational direction for technological progress.

p A. C. Clarke is perfectly right in saying that the use of “thinking machines" will free the human brain to concentrate on more difficult problems, on more complex creative work. Assessing the long-term prospects for the development of cybernetics, he argues that “machine sapiens" will become the friend of homo sapiens because “the higher the intellect, the stronger the urge to collaborate”. In the more remote future Clarke foresees the birth of “machine sapiens" with an original manner of thinking, for example, protoplasmic cybernetic organisms, which can be programmed to attain certain aims.  [296•2 

p Clarke’s ideas are supported by the forecasts of T. S, Gordon and Olaf Helmer, RAND Corporation experts, who attempted to define the main stages in future automation of production by questioning a large number of American specialists in automation and cybernetics.

p Their examination of the “man and machine" problem touches not only upon the inter-relation between the individual and technology, but also on aspects which extend beyond the framework of actual material production, such as nature of work, social structure of society, and socio- economic relations as a whole.

p The automation stages are presented as follows:  [296•3 

p Complete control of air traffic....... 1974

p Automation of housework......... 1975

p Education becomes a pastime....... 1975

p Universal use of teaching machines..... 1975

p Automatic libraries........... 1976

p Rapid machine translation........ 1979

p Use of machines for automatic decision-taking 1979

p Use of centralised electronic calculation units. . 1980

p Electronic invalid aids (radar for the blind). . . 1985

p Automatic diagnosis of diseases...... 1985

p Use of robots for housework....... 1988

p Creation of a new language based on machine translation ............... 2000

p Direct injection of information into the brain 2000

p Automatic voting.......... 2000

p Motorways with automatic control..... 2000

p Symbiosis between man and the electronic machine 2000

The conclusion reached by Norbert Wiener in his study of this problem is very interesting. He stated that machines could become our helpers “but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence".  [297•1  In another of his works he writes that “the new development has unbounded possibilities for good and for evil".  [297•2  No good can come of these new possibilities if they are assessed from the viewpoint of the market and monetary economy. It is essential to have a society based on human values other than buying and selling.  [297•3  As for the capitalist world, he takes the view that there the introduction of automatic machines “will produce an unemployment situation, in comparison with which the present recession and even the depression of the thirties will seem a pleasant joke."  [297•4  It is a fact that the automation and cybernetisation of production in modern capitalist society is not transforming capitalism, as many bourgeois sociologists and economists try to assure us, but on the contrary is creating the prerequisites for social revolution, by continuing to prepare the material conditions for replacing capitalist production relations by socialist ones.