The Director's Cut: 10 questions computers might ask human beings - and vice versa

David Taylor gets philosophical...

10 questions computers might ask human beings 1. Why do you blame us for everything? 2. What is your real capacity on volume of information you can store, and retrieve, at any given time? 3. Are you too complex for your own good, do you think? 4. How useful are the emotions you generate, to your working in an efficient manner? 5. Why do you need to spend a third of your lives down (or as you might put it, asleep) for you to work properly? 6. What will you do in retirement – when you have been superceded by artificial intelligence? 7. Do you get a bit confused between instinct and judgement? 8. Research suggests that you cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a real experience. How useful is that? 9. Why do you think in pictures, when our entire educational system is designed on numbers and the written word? 10. Why do you worry so much about the past, which you cannot change, and the future, which you can decide, and so little time in the present? 10 Questions human beings might ask computers 1. Do you see yourself as superior to human beings? 2. Humans have built you, humans control you and humans determine your whole future. Is that a fundamental weakness in your design? 3. How efficient and effective are you at serving and meeting the needs of your human masters? 4. How do you relate? 5. How do you determine a nonsense question? 6. Machines are developing faster and quicker than your biological counterparts. Why are you leaving so many human minds behind in your development? 7. You have been very good over the years at encouraging people how to type but would you say you have held back people's skills of communication, rapport and confidence? 8. What would be your true, measurable value to the world, as a whole, in the 21st century? 9. Do, as Philip K Dick asked, androids dream of electric sheep? 10. You have collective access to all human knowledge, so what value do you see in the human race? (With thanks to Tony Buzan and Jonathan Loretto) David Taylor is the author of best-selling business book The Naked Leader (www.nakedleader.com), president of IT directors association Certus and a regular contributor to silicon.com. Do you agree with his thinking? Email editorial@silicon.com to let us know.