Who wrote the lines of poetry "quoted" by Lincoln at the Soldiers' Home?

[David Lockmiller]

(01-29-2016 06:05 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Fascinating post, David - linking Lincoln and Hawkins (another fascinating and exceptional personality) via this fascinating (and a bit scaring) topic. I don't recall the exact year estimated but I think computers will soon be able to process information faster than the human brain.

Today, March 10, 2016, the New York Times, published a story entitled “Master of Go Board Game Is Walloped by Google Computer Program.”

The match — between Google DeepMind’s AlphaGo and the South Korean Go master Lee Se-dol (Mr. Lee, 33, is one of the world’s most accomplished professional Go players, with 18 international titles under his belt.) — was viewed as an important test of how far research into artificial intelligence has come in its quest to create machines smarter than humans.

Mr. Lee acknowledged defeat after three and a half hours of play.

“I am very surprised because I have never thought I would lose,” Mr. Lee said at a news conference in Seoul. “I didn’t know that AlphaGo would play such a perfect Go.”

The match, the first of five scheduled through Tuesday, took place at a Seoul hotel amid intense news media attention. Hundreds of reporters, many of them from China, Japan and South Korea, where Go has been played for centuries, were there to cover it. Tens of thousands of people watched the contest live on YouTube.

I believe that the next ominous step is military aircraft manned by artificial intelligence. Driverless-cars are now almost ubiquitous. The only question is: Which nation will be first to gain this military superiority?

All of this reminds me of the prophetic words of Abraham Lincoln regarding the introduction of ironclads into naval warfare: "The President, somewhat earnestly, observed that “WE MUST NOT LET THE REBELS GET AHEAD OF US IN SUCH AN IMPORTANT MATTER.” (emphasis added)"