machine savante

CONT: ... intelligent machines open up a world of possibility, speculation, and intellectual enrichment that could be - and for our children will be - the intellectual's instrument par excellence, a means of testing hypotheses, examining theories, playing ""what if?"" games, and reshaping human thought at a level complexity that no other intellectual tool - certainly not the written word, not any form of graphics we use now, or mathematics - has ever been able to provide. The extension of human intellect that the Fifth Generation will give us is simply staggering.