Decoded (10 page)

Early in the summer of 1950, it began pouring with rain one evening and just continued through the night without a break. Enormous raindrops fell against the tiles, sometimes with a noise almost like that of hammering, at other times with a duller thudding. From the sound of the rain lashing against the roof, you might have imagined that there was some kind of giant centipede up there, running for its life. The changes in the noise were the result of the wind getting up – when it blew strongly the sound became sharper. At the same time you could hear the tug of the wind on the window frames. Thanks to all this racket, Young Lillie hadn’t slept at all well. The sleepless night had given him a headache and his eyes were somewhat swollen. He listened to the sound of the wind and rain, realizing that he and his house were both getting old. He finally fell asleep just before dawn. However, he woke up again pretty quickly – something seemed to have woken him. Mrs Lillie said it was the sound of a motor-car.

‘It sounds as though a car has stopped downstairs,’ she said. ‘It will be gone in a moment.’

He knew that he was not going to fall asleep again, but Young Lillie stayed in bed. Once it was dawn, he got up the way that an old man does get out of bed, feeling his way, moving so gently that he made almost no noise, like a shadow. After he got up, he didn’t even go to the bathroom – he went straight downstairs. His wife asked him why he was going downstairs. He didn’t know. He just carried on going, fumbling in the dark, and once he got there, he opened the front door. There were two parts to the front door. The inner door opened into the house; the outer door opened out into the courtyard. The outer door seemed to be being blocked by something because you could only open it a crack, maybe 30 degrees. Since it was summertime, the outer door was in use – a piece of cloth had been hung over the frame so that during the daytime you could leave it open but people couldn’t see into the house. The old man couldn’t see what was blocking the door, so he had to turn sideways and slide out through the crack. He discovered that two enormous cardboard boxes were filling the tiny courtyard. The first one was blocking the door, stopping him from getting in and out; the second one had already become sodden in the wind and rain. The old man tried to push the second box somewhere out of the rain but he simply couldn’t move it – the contents couldn’t have been heavier if they had been paving slabs. He inched his way back into the house and found a couple of pieces of oiled paper to cover it with. Once he had done that, he noticed that there was a letter on top of the box, held down by the stone they normally used to prop open the front door.

The old man picked up the letter – it was from Jan Liseiwicz.

This is what he had to say:

Dear Lillie,

I am leaving and since I do not want to put anyone to any trouble, I have decided to say goodbye in this letter – I hope you can forgive me. I need to talk to you about Jinzhen – in fact, I can’t be happy until I have told you what I what I want to say. The first thing is that I hope he gets well soon. The second is that I hope you will make the best possible arrangements for his future, so that we (by which I mean humanity as a whole) can gain the greatest benefit from his genius.

To tell you the truth, in my opinion, letting Jinzhen immerse himself in an enormous and complex mathematics research topic would be the most suitable use for his remarkable talents. That in its turn creates a further problem. The world has changed, people are becoming more and more short-sighted and profit-orientated; they want to see some immediate and concrete benefit and are less and less interested in topics of purely theoretical application. This is completely stupid. It is no less stupid than entirely subordinating pleasures of the mind to those of the body. However, we cannot change this fact, any more than we can guarantee that the scourge of war has been completely eliminated from our society. It was because of this that I started to wonder whether it might not be better to encourage him to become immersed in a technical topic which would be of some concrete practical benefit. The good point of that kind of research is that you get great encouragement from it: each result pushes you on to the next one – it can be deeply fulfilling. The downside is that once you have finished you have also lost control of your project – your own personal wishes on the subject will be ignored. Your creation may bring great benefits to the world, or it may bring great harm – either way, you have no choice but to stand aside. It is said that Oppenheimer now really regrets his work on the first nuclear bomb and that he would like to rescind his creation – if he could destroy it with a blow from a hammer like a statue, I am sure that he would. But is that kind of thing possible? Once the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put it back in again.

If you decide that you want him to try and undertake a scientific research topic, let me suggest that he work on artificial intelligence. Once we have solved that particular mystery, we will be able to create a machine that in some way mimics the human mind, and the next step will be the development of robots – inanimate human beings. Science has already begun to unlock the secrets of other organs – eyes, noses, ears – we are now even in a position where we can create artificial wings. Why cannot we begin to work on artificial intelligence? The fact is, the development of the computer involves the creation of a kind of artificial intelligence, though it is solely concerned with calculations. Since we can already create a machine that can carry out that kind of function, surely other aspects cannot be too far behind? Think about it for a moment: if we have this kind of inanimate human beings – creatures made of metal, robots powered by electricity – how many uses they could be put to! In this generation we have suffered so much warfare – in the space of less than half a century we have been forced to go through two world wars. What is more I suspect (indeed I have already seen some proof ) that soon we will have another war – what a terrible thing that is! In my opinion, humanity can now make warfare even more appalling, even more frightening, even more terrible that at any point in history. It is now possible to kill a truly enormous number of people on the same field of battle, to have them die at the same time, to have them die instantly, to have them die the moment the bomb explodes. It seems that we will never be rid of warfare, and yet the hope that one day we can rid the world of this scourge has been handed down from one generation to the next. Mankind is faced with many terrible problems of this kind, which require enormous labour; which require exploration in dangerous circumstances . . . Mankind seems unable to extract itself from the difficulties that beset it.

If scientists were to succeed in creating an artificial human being – a robot, a creature made of metal, a being without flesh or blood – we could allow them to do work that is at present carried out by people working in genuinely inhuman conditions, fulfilling some of our more perverse requirements. I am sure that no one could object to that. That means that this branch of scientific endeavour, once fully publicized, would have an immeasurable practical value and a wonderful future. The first step is to solve the mystery of intelligence. It is only in this way, by creating artificial intelligence, that you have any chance of making the next step and creating a robot that can undertake some of the tasks at present carried out by humans. At one time I decided that the rest of my life would be devoted to cracking the problems connected with artificial intelligence but before I had even properly begun, I was forced to give up this idea. I have never told anyone why I gave up – let me just say that it was not because of any particular problem or lack of ability, but at the express command of the Jewish people. The last few years I have been working on something very important on their behalf – the troubles that they have faced and their hopes for the future have moved me deeply; for their sake I have given up a long cherished ambition. I have said this much in the hope of piquing your interest.

Let me remind you: without Jinzhen, you cannot do this. What I mean is that if Jinzhen does eventually die from this terrible disease, you had better give up the idea of developing this project because you are too old for it. If Jinzhen survives, perhaps within your lifetime you will see one of the last great mysteries to confront humankind solved through the creation of artificial intelligence. Believe me, Jinzhen is the best person to find a solution to this problem – this is what he was born to do; God has chosen him. As you have mentioned to me before, dreams are the most mysterious manifestation of the human spirit, and this is something he has confronted day and night since the time he was a tiny child. Over the course of time, he has built up truly remarkable skills at interpreting the meaning of dreams. Although he did not realize it, right from the beginning of his conscious life, he began preparations for researching the mysteries of human intelligence. This is what he is meant to do!

Let me end by saying that if you and God are both in agreement that Jinzhen is here to develop the science of artificial intelligence, then this letter may prove helpful. Otherwise, if either you or God is determined to prevent him from pursuing this line of inquiry, then give this letter to the university library, that it may serve as a memento of the twelve happy years that I have spent working there.

I hope that Jinzhen will recover soon!

Jan Liseiwicz.

Written on the eve of departure.

Young Lillie read this letter straight through, sitting on the cardboard box. The wind ruffled the pages; raindrops caught and tossed in the breeze spattered down, as if they too wanted to read the contents of this letter. Maybe it was because he had not slept well the night before; maybe it was because the letter had touched some hidden corner of his mind: the old man sat quiet for a long time after he had finished reading. He sat quietly, looking up into space. After a very long time, he finally seemed to come to. Turning into the wind and rain, he suddenly spoke the following words: ‘Goodbye, Jan. I hope that you have a good journey . . . ’

Jan Liseiwicz decided to leave after his father-in-law was almost executed as a war criminal.

As I am sure you are well aware, Liseiwicz was offered many opportunities to leave, particularly in the wake of the end of the Second World War. There were all sorts of universities and research institutes in the West that wanted him to join them, and his drawers were stuffed with invitations of one kind or another. However, it was quite clear that he had no intention of going anywhere – for example he brought back that huge wooden case of books and then a little bit later on he bought not only the house in Sanyuan Lane that he had been living in for years, but the whole courtyard. He was working hard at his Chinese and spoke the language better than ever. In the end he announced that he was going to apply for Chinese citizenship (this was never followed up). I believe that Liseiwicz and his father-inlaw were very close. This man was the son of a Provincial Graduate and a member of a very wealthy family – by far the most important gentry family in the region. When his daughter announced that she wanted to marry a foreigner he was extremely opposed to the idea. When she told him that she was getting married anyway, he placed very strict demands on the couple. Liseiwicz was told that he would never be allowed to take his wife to live abroad, that he would not be allowed to divorce her, that he would have to learn to speak Chinese, that any children would take their mother’s surname, and so on. From all of this you can see that while the man was a member of a prominent gentry family, he was neither educated nor gentlemanly. He was the kind of unpleasant person who would take advantage of his wealth and power to bully everyone else. When someone with that kind of personality finds themselves in an exalted position, it is easy to imagine that they will build up a lot of resentment against themselves. Furthermore, during the time of the puppet government, he occupied an important office in the county administration and was involved in some very dubious dealings with the Japanese. After the Liberation, the People’s Government was determined to deal with him and he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. At the time of which I am speaking, he was in prison awaiting execution.

In the run-up to the appointed date, Liseiwicz went the rounds of every professor and student that he could think of, including Daddy and me, in the hope that we would write a joint letter to the government and thereby save his father-in-law’s life. Everyone refused. I am sure this wounded Liseiwicz deeply, but we really didn’t have a choice. To tell the truth, it is not that we did not want to help; there was genuinely nothing we could do. The situation in those days was not such that a couple of people making a fuss or a small demonstration was going to change anything. Daddy did actually go and speak to the mayor on his behalf, but the only answer he got was: ‘Only Chairman Mao himself can save the man now.’ What he meant was that Liseiwicz’s father-in-law was doomed!

The fact is that in those days, the People’s Government was targeting men like him – bullies who had used their position to make the lives of the local people miserable. This was a matter of state policy and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. Liseiwicz didn’t understand that: he was far too naïve about the whole situation. There was nothing that we could do and so we simply ended up hurting him.

What no one could have imagined was that Liseiwicz was in the end able to use the government of X country to save his father-in-law from the firing squad. It was quite unbelievable! Particularly when you consider that at that time, our two countries were open enemies – you can imagine how difficult it was to achieve what he did. Apparently X country sent a special envoy to Beijing to discuss the matter with our government – in the end the whole matter did end up on Chairman Mao’s plate – either his or Zhou Enlai’s! The final decision must have been made by someone right at the top of the Politburo. It really was quite unbelievable!