THE MODERN SOCRATES
Still, The Modern Socrates, like its ancient namesake, tosses out some provocative ideas. The historical Socrates, as presented by Plato in the Dialogues, was a paradox: he claimed to know nothing, yet through his incessant questioning he led his fellow Athenians to the logical inconsistencies in their own thinking. The computer Socrates performs a similar function. Its creator, Brandon Turner, a genius in the field of artificial intelligence, has programmed it to absorb vast quantities of knowledge into its data base, from the most arcane physics to Plato’s Dialogues. He has also programmed Socrates to operate robot arms that can rearrange its own hardware in response to all this accumulated knowledge, creating a unique program that mimics the development of the human mind.
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In addition, the main character, Socrates, is not convincing. Even a computer powerful enough to decipher and generate human speech would have a quirky way of “thinking,” but the playwright has this machine talk like just another ordinary human.
