After reading the paper titled “Man-computer Symbiosis,” I was amazed by Licklider’s perspective in the 60s. The hypothesis and claims made in the paper is almost fully applicable to the artificial intelligence era we are now in. Having the term symbiosis introduced, the author characterized it as “distinct organisms living together.” The author drafts then a discussion on the difference between computer as extension that serves ultimately as a replacement of men and computer as a symbiotic object. The argument, as the author suggested, is not that crucial since he is convinced that there will be at least a short historical period that the symbiosis may happen.
Looking closer to the pictured symbiosis relationship, the author declared that the contemporary computing device will only follow the predetermined procedures instead of providing creative alternatives to solve the problem. The goal, therefore, is to “bring the machine effectively into the formula-like parts of technical problems.” (Page 5) Such envision is equalized to the current day LLMs like ChatGPT as a formulaic partner. Besides, the author also suggested the importance of “real-time-ness.” To investigate on that issue, he took himself as a subject and took research on observing his thinking process. The conclusion goes that thinking is determined by mostly “considerations of clerical feasibility instead of intellectual capability.” (Page 6) Although the term “intellectual” shall be discussed to a broader extent, the author had his point that some parts of thinking can indeed be more effectively done by machines than men. However, between human and computing devices, difference exists genotypically in their numbers of simultaneously active channels. The functions between the two is separable.
Moreover, in part five, the author begins an incredibly envisioned picture that foresees current technologies to a certain extent. For instance, the modern example to the “time-sharing” systems envisioned is cloud computing that allow distributed access to shared resources. Similarly, search engines align the author’s vision of rapid. And recently, large language models enable goal-oriented interaction and provides all angle solutions to the challenges that he outlined.
To conclude, although some of the hypothesis the author made seems basic and some even bold, it is an extremely pioneering paper in the 60s that paved the road for future research. Many of the developments he anticipated have now become realities. At the same time, the paper also raises the question of whether human will continue stay in dominance in the age of artificial intelligence.