"Every time one combines and records facts in accordance with established logical processes, the creative aspect of thinking is concerned only with the selection of the data and the process to be employed, and the manipulation thereafter is repetitive in nature and hence a fit matter to be relegated to the machines." (Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think", 1945)
"Let it be remarked [...] that an important difference between the way in which we use the brain and the machine is that the machine is intended for many successive runs, either with no reference to each other, or with a minimal, limited reference, and that it can be cleared between such runs; while the brain, in the course of nature, never even approximately clears out its past records. Thus the brain, under normal circumstances, is not the complete analogue of the computing machine but rather the analogue of a single run on such a machine." (Norbert Wiener, "Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine", 1948)
"Machines might give us more time to think but will never do our thinking for us." (Thomas Watson Jr., 1957)
"The study of thinking machines teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods. Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets." (William S Burroughs, "Naked Lunch Benway Naked Lunch", 1959)
"A smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it." (Stanisław Lem, "The Futurological Congress The Futurological Congress", 1971)
"The idea of making machines that think has an unfailing fascination, not only for science fiction readers, but for all who can see it is a possible way of gaining some understanding of the working of our own minds. Thinking, however, is not an easily defined phenomenon, although it is often considered to be the process of solving problems." (Edward Ihnatowicz, "The Relevance of Manipulation to the Process of Perception", 1977)
"Computers and robots replace humans in the exercise of mental functions in the same way as mechanical power replaced them in the performance of physical tasks. As time goes on, more and more complex mental functions will be performed by machines. Any worker who now performs his task by following specific instructions can, in principle, be replaced by a machine. This means that the role of humans as the most important factor of production is bound to diminish - in the same way that the role of horses in agricultural production was first diminished and then eliminated by the introduction of tractors." (Wassily Leontief, National perspective: The definition of problem and opportunity, 1983)
"It's difficult to be rigorous about whether a machine really 'knows', 'thinks', etc., because we're hard put to define these things. We understand human mental processes only slightly better than a fish understands swimming." (John McCarthy, "The Little Thoughts of Thinking Machines", Psychology Today, 1983)
"Once a computer achieves human intelligence it will necessarily roar past it." (Ray Kurzweil, "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence", 1999)
"As machines slip from human control they will do more than become conscious. They will become spiritual beings, whose inner life is no more limited by conscious thought than ours. Not only will they think and have emotions. They will develop the errors and illusions that go with self-awareness." (John Gray, "Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals", 2002)
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