Machines X (Man vs. Machine II)

"Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it. For this reason, all the investigations have been vain, which the greatest philosophers have made à priori, that is to say, in so far as they use, as it were, the wings of the spirit. Thus it is only à posteriori or by trying to disentangle the soul from the organs of the body, so to speak, that one can reach the highest probability concerning man's own nature, even though one can not discover with certainty what his nature is." (Julien Offray de La Mettrie, "Man a Machine", 1747) 

"The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels the same effects may be more easily produced." (Adam Smith, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations", 1776)

"As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares - the propensity and vocation to free thinking - this gradually works back upon the character of the people, who thereby gradually become capable of managing freedom; finally, it affects the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity." (Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?", 1784)

"Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing." (John S Mill, "On Liberty Source: On Liberty", 1859)

"The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody." (Ralph W Emerson, "Society and Solitude", 1870)

"It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organisation upon the natural organisation of the body: so that acts, which at first required a conscious effort, eventually became unconscious and mechanical." (Thomas H Huxley, "Descartes’ Discourse on Method", 1904)

"As long as the machine has beaten the man who programmed it in checkers, it will in some sense compete with human intelligence over a limited scope." (Norbert Wiener, "Computer of the Future", 1962)

"Man is not an appropriate model for a machine. If we abandon that model, we are free to take a totally different approach to a task, as Howe did with sewing, and end up with a new definition of it as well as a new way of doing it. Only when we have studied the task and understood its requirements can we properly decide what the machine or robot for that job should be like. [...] Robots are not mechanical people; they are parts of an integrated manufacturing system." (Daniel E Whitney, Harvard Business Review, 1986)

"A computer makes calculations quickly and correctly, but doesn’t ask if the calculations are meaningful or sensible. A computer just does what it is told." (Gary Smith, "Standard Deviations", 2014)

"Now think about the prospect of competition from computers instead of competition from human workers. On the supply side, computers are far more different from people than any two people are different from each other: men and machines are good at fundamentally different things. People have intentionality - we form plans and make decisions in complicated situations. We’re less good at making sense of enormous amounts of data. Computers are exactly the opposite: they excel at efficient data processing, but they struggle to make basic judgments that would be simple for any human." (Peter Thiel & Blake Masters, "Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future", 2014)