Sociological Aspects 
whether we should assume that the machine would fulfil the 
real aim for which we put it there and that it would not have 
any psychopathology. We trust a traffic light in preference to 
a policeman because it never gets too big for its boots—it 
never wants to push people around for its own unconscious 
reasons. I do not know whether we can assume this could be 
true of all machines. Presumably if our programming of the 
computer did not embody any unconscious preoccupations of 
the kind which we as human beings have, then the machine 
would be free of the factors which limit our judgments. If 
we are going to make a machine mimic rather than better 
human judgment, I suppose we should have to give it an 
unconscious. Then it will exhibit archetypes and structural 
patterns of thought which might compel us to develop, as I 
think Koprowski once suggested, the new skill of psycho- 
analysis of computers! 
I am not very enthusiastic about the idea of machines for a 
better deception of the public by the prediction of the way they 
may vote in certain circumstances, and I am still less enthusi- 
astic about the possibility of plugging into each other’s brains. 
One of the drawbacks of meetings such as this is that we tend 
to assemble as a gathering of speakers rather than an audience 
of listeners and I suspect the signal-to-noise level might be 
rather poor in such a system. 
MacKay: At least while one was addressing an audience, 
one might be glad to be unplugged from the thoughts of those 
one is talking to! I do not really expect our thoughts to be 
transferable in this way, because so much brain action seems 
to depend on the relative timing of vast numbers of simil- 
taneous signals in parallel channels. 
The great thing about a human governor is that he is 
answerable. If he turns out to be a dud there is some hope of 
throwing him out at the next election! Whereas an expensive 
machine creates a vested interest. 
It should not be impossible to make a machine acceptably 
impartial in looking up and calculating data to guide human 
governors; and no doubt one could be made to imitate any 
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