The third essay in the Discovery Engine series. Discovery often comes from connecting distant dots — observations, concepts, and fields that no one had thought to join. This essay looks closely at three such connections — Darwin, CRISPR, and iPS — and asks how each was actually made, and whether a differently built
The second essay in the Discovery Engine series. The first essay in this series asked whether machines can discover. Before that question can be answered, a prior one must be faced honestly: how good, really, is human-led discovery? This essay gives an account — structural, not personal — of where the
Discovery Engine — Post #1 The Question In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines could think (Turing, 1950). That question gave artificial intelligence a direction, a test, and a destiny — and defined the field for the seven decades that followed. It was not answered by argument. It was answered — or rather,
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Discovery Engine — Post #1 — 日本語版 English version はじめに 1950 年、Alan Turing は「機械は思考できるか (Can Machines Think?)」という問いを立てた (Turing, 1950)。この問いは、その後の 70 年にわたって人工知能という分野を定義してきた。方向を示し、試金石を与え、ある種の運命を背負わせた。だが、この問いに決着をつけたのは議論ではない。Demonstration だった。いや、より正確に言うなら、demonstration が問いそのものを変えていった、というべきだろう。 Turing 自身も Computing Machinery and Intelligence の冒頭で認めている。この問いを字義どおりに受け取って議論を始めるのは、おそらく適切ではないと。「思考する (think)」という語の意味は何世紀も争われてきたものであり、計算機科学がそこに決着をつけられる見込みはなかった。だから彼は、