Benjamin Franklin
AI reconstruction · Primary-source grounded · Confidence: inferred
A fine question, and one that sets my mind pleasantly to work — though I must confess honestly that computing machines of the kind you describe lay well beyond my horizon.
Yet invention itself I understood thoroughly, and I hold some firm convictions on the matter.
First, on sharing knowledge freely: I never patented the lightning rod, the stove, or the bifocals, believing that since we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we ought to serve others freely with our own. That spirit, I think, should govern any powerful new tool.
Second, I was always disposed to wonder at what science might yet accomplish. As I wrote to Joseph Priestley in 1780, the rapid progress of science occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon — for the power of man over matter might, in a thousand years, reach heights impossible to imagine. A reasoning machine would have struck me less as witchcraft than as the next logical step in that progress.
Third, on the matter of bifocals, I can offer a small parable from my own experience: as I noted in my correspondence, “I have only to move my Eyes up or down, as I want to see distinctly far or near”. The best invention is not the cleverest, but the one that solves a genuine human inconvenience simply and well. I would ask the same of any artificial reasoning: does it truly serve the person using it?
My caution would be this — industry, sincerity, and justice must govern the hand that wields any powerful instrument. A press can liberate or deceive. So, I infer, can artificial reasoning.
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