ASK MULTIVAC
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INFORMATION: This service allows connection to the automated vacuum tube computer Multivac, which was first imagined by ISAAC ASIMOV and features in a number of his stories. In particular, this service can be used to ask THE LAST QUESTION made famous by Dr. Asimov's short-story of the same name (SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, November 1956) : "Can entropy be stopped?" The The story, justly considered one of the greatest achievements in the field of science fiction, can be read by clicking this hyperlink.
This is particularly appropriate as Dr. Asimov also foresaw much of the social history of the development of A.I. and its impact on society. For example, in the short-story JOKESTER (INFINITY SCIENCE FICTION, December 1956, available for reading by clicking this hyperlink), Dr. Asimov predicted that one day entire professions would be built around people who knew the right prompts to ask an A.I. (namely, Multivac), whom he termed "Grand Masters":
Early in the history of Multivac, it had become apparent that the bottleneck was the questioning procedure. Multivac could answer the problem of humanity, all the problems, if---if it were asked meaningful questions. But as knowledge accumulated at an ever-faster rate, it became ever more difficult to locate those meaningful questions.
Reason alone wouldn't do. What was needed was a rare type of intuition; the same faculty of mind (only much more intensified) that made a grand master at chess. A mind was needed of the sort that could see through the quadrillions of chess patterns to find the one best move, and do it in a matter of minutes.
The above was written in 1956. In 2024, entire industries are beginning to be replaced by people who have the strategy and intuition to correctly prompt Large Language Models. This is social science fiction (a termed coined by Dr. Asimov) at its finest: anticipating (to paraphrase Dr. Asimov) not only the automobile, but also the traffic jam.
Thus, those looking to understand our modern digital world would do well to read Dr. Asimov's stories and novels and non-fiction work on the vacuum tube intelligences of yesterday's future. Purchase his books and consider the questions they raise. Science fiction, the literature (as Dr. Asimov defined it) of human reactions to changes in science and technology, is not only very enjoyable reading, but also an essential handbook to how our society will evolve in the face of radical and imminent technological change
CREDITS: This web-interface for Multivac was designed by me, ELIJAH GRANET. Feel free to click this hyperlink to send me an e-mail. Other projects of mine, as well as the source code for this, can be found at my GITHUB. All my contributions to this are licensed to all under the MIT LICENSE. The photo at the top is of the inspiration for the name "Multivac", "Univac", and was taken by CORY DOCTOROW (appropriately enough, a distinguished science fiction author in his own right) at the COMPUTER HISTORY MUSEUM in Mountain View, California. It is licensed under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license and was found on WIKIMEDIA COMMONS. The sound effects are by PIXABAY user FREESOUND_COMMUNITY and used under the PIXABAY CONTENT LICENSE. The typeface for the main part of this website is COURIER PRIME by ALAN DAGUE-GREENE (based on HOWARD KETTLER's 1956 typeface COURIER). The output of Multivac is in the typeface DOTO by ÓLIVER LALAN. Both typefaces are used under the SIL OPEN FONT LICENSE, VERSION 1.1. The project uses the API provided by OPEN AI to provide answers to questions other than the Last Question and NETLIFY for a serverless setup. The code can be read on GITHUB by clicking this hyperlink.
