Cyberneticists are joking, or Visiting artificial intelligence

The fact that physicists joke has been known since the 1960s, when a book with the same title was published. Of course, not only physicists joked, but for a long time this was not confirmed in print. Cyberneticists were among the first to break into the USSR book market and in March 1983, our laboratory wall newspaper "Impulse" became involved in this undertaking.

The fact that two cyberneticists - an artificial intelligence specialist Pospelov and a popularizer Pekelis (author of the book "Cybernetic Mix") decided to prove that cyberneticists also joked, we learned at the editorial board from Zhenya Mazepa and Fedor Dzerzhinsky, the grandson of that very Felix Edmundovich (and his complete opposite) told him. Fedor Yanovich visited Dubna, read our wall newspaper, appreciated its humor and recommended us to Pospelov.

And the next day, Mazepa and I went to Moscow by the first train and there were already three of us in Moscow: a colleague Fedyunkin from ONMU was in the same car with us; he was going about his business but having heard about the collection, he promised to help - to substitute, so to speak, his literary shoulder.

It was nine in the morning, the meeting was scheduled for "after one", to get to the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences, where Pospelov worked, an hour at the most and we had to live somewhere for three hours - we still did not know how to compress time. In the cinema "Russia" there was the premiere of a new film by Eldar Ryazanov "Station for two"; we boarded the "black five" and fifteen minutes later got off at Pushkin Square. It turned out, however, that the next screening started at eleven and the film was a two-part one and we set off without a specific goal down Gorky Street.

The time was harsh, Andropov's (the railroad workers said: Andropov took us for this very thing), and the usually busy and crowded Gorky Street looked deserted, as in the days of the Moscow Olympics, only cars still were going back and forth in two heavy streams.

Having reached the Central Telegraph building on the other side of the road, we turned onto Chekhov Street and Fedyunkin led us to the Artistic Cafe. The cafe was closed. We looked into the snack bar "Pelmeni". In the empty room, two women in white dressing gowns were lazily exchanging news.

"Pelmeni have not been delivered yet," one of them said.

"Are they imported from Paris?" Mazepa asked and we again were on the street.

There were more than two hours left before the meeting. Appetite has not yet played out, but already made itself felt.

"Now I would love to sit in the "Yama"," Mazepa said dreamily. "I would drink beer with shrimp. And then immediately to Pospelov."

"Maybe we'll go to Red Square?" I suggested.

"For what?" Mazepa was terribly surprised.

"Well, like this. I haven't been for a long time."

As a result, we visited GUM. Mazepa bought a can of herring and a plastic bag for it but Fedyunkin and me - nothing; Fedyunkin looked at his watch and announced that he was going to the store "Electronics" for an electronic alarm clock (that is logical) but he promised to be at Pospelov's and strengthen our numbers.

Mazepa and I had a snack at the nearest "Buterbrodnaya" after which using three methods of transportation: on foot to the metro station "Dzerzhinskaya", by metro to the station "Leninsky Prospekt" and by tram to the Computing Centre of the Academy of Sciences, we reduced the amount of free time to half an hour.

The door to Pospelov's office was locked. I settled down on a narrow windowsill and began to look at what we had taken with us and Mazepa went to look for Misha Kharyuzov that was finishing his postgraduate studies with Bryabrin. He returned full of new impressions:

"Well, Moscow! Well, mother capital! They don't know who's in the next room!"

What's next! Even in the one to which graduate student Kharyuzov was attached, they did not immediately remember where they had heard this surname, but remembering, they asked me to tell that the boss was looking for him for the third day ...

It was already five minutes to one, Mazepa went to find out when Pospelov was expected and returned with another news: it turned out that there were two Pospelovs there and both of them were engaged in artificial intelligence and we were at the office of Germogen Sergeevich that will no longer be here today, but about the collection one needed to contact Dmitry Alexandrovich...

As they told us at the new place, Dmitry Alexandrovich had not yet come. From the window at which we settled down, the neighboring Steklovka was visible. People went out into the corridor to smoke and people gathered in groups, threw cigarette butts into the trash can and returned to their rooms and new ones took their place. I drew attention to the young people listening to a young man in the red sweater, he was telling something, helping himself with expressive gestures. Among the listeners there was a man older than the rest, about a generation; in a blue suit, with slicked-back hair and an eagle eye, he was listening with particular attention, blowing smoke intelligently over his young colleagues.

"Frame... Associative chain... Frame..." came to me.

It looked like everyone there was engaged with artificial intelligence! I didn't understand everything and I didn't hear everything, but the dramaturgy of what was happening was clear anyway. The young man in the red sweater was interrupted from time to time by his peer in a gray jacket - he was inserting short remarks and asking questions, the rest was just listening; a man in a blue suit, having finished smoking, threw a cigarette butt into the urn, missed it, stroked the back of his head with his palm, put his hands behind his back and went on listening, swaying from heel to toe. When the young man in the sweater, smiling happily, said that the procedure turned out to be "terribly recursive" and one more unit should be written and also a control programme was needed,

"I don't even hope to debug it!" the man in the blue suit nodded in understanding and spoke.

"You know," he said with a significant air, "I have a graduate student. She could help you.

"Oh, that would be nice!" the young man in the red sweater responded enthusiastically.

"But she has one peculiarity," the man in the blue suit warned. "She does everything very slowly. Very good, reliable but slow."

"That's clear," the boy nodded.

"Therefore, choose a piece for her so that you don't depend on her too much. Not much hope for her..."

Whether the man in the blue suit succeeded in sticking his graduate student someplace or not, I never had a chance to find out.

"And here is Pospelov," Mazepa said. "Exactly Pospelov. I recognized him. We drank vodka with him last year at "Dialogue"."

Pospelov was rapidly approaching, dragging the people standing in the corridor behind him; when he caught up with us, a "tail" of five or six people was already stretching behind him.

"Hello!" Mazepa succeded to say before Dmitry Alexandrovich dived through the door.

"Hello," he echoed, without turning around.

"We are from Dubna! Did Dzerzhinsky say anything to you?" Mazepa called after him.

"He said something," an echo answered him and Pospelov's students, pushing Mazepa aside, burst into the office; the door was still open.

"Will you talk to us?"

"If not for long, come on, I have a seminar soon."

And the door closed.

Well, it's just a joke! Mazepa said.

"This is Dzerzhinsky's defect," I agreed.

"Okay, Fedya will come to Dubna, I'll tell him ..." Mazepa did not finish. "Where is the office?" he asked the men in the corridor. "Can you book a business trip?"

One of them looked at Mazepa with interest, glanced at the plastic bag, from which a bunch of tulips, bought in the underground passage, was sticking out and smiled - as a Moscow native is able to do it when he sees a guest of the capital:

"Probably, it is possible."

And he showed me where to go, even showed me a little. And then, of course, Pospelov came out into the corridor again...

"Dmitry Aleksandrovich!" I called.

He tossed his head.

"Yes?"

"Could you give us a few minutes, please?"

"Wait a second, I'll be right back," Pospelov said and disappeared behind the side door again, this time a different one. And then as in a theater, Mazepa appeared again with travel sheets...

As a result, Pospelov nevertheless welcomed us. With one hand he was turning over the sheets, skimming through our opuses, with the other one he was signing the papers that were slipped to him, then he picked up the telephone receiver and loudly, as if speaking with Vladivostok, informed the invisible interlocutor on the other end of the wire that he was sorry, but to meet him next week he couldn't because the next day he would disappear for a month - he was going to fly to a conference in Hungary...

Pospelov immediately rejected "Ivan Zhukov": "Well, "Vanka" was already tortured," and he looked through the rest, quickly turning over the sheets, and only at "Meetings with Khoshenko" he slowed down and read this little masterpiece carefully, from beginning to end and reaching the phrase: "How appropriate the words of Marx are here!" the president sighed," and he himself sighed:

"You know, in the publishing house they are afraid of everything, any hints, ambiguities, allegories... Although humor is humor..."

"What are they afraid of: form or content?" Fedyunkin asked that suddenly appeared.

"Perhaps, forms," Pospelov answered after a pause and looked at Fedyunkin with interest. "When they run into something like that..."

"Well then," this man said that was expected everywhere and torn to pieces, having finished reading. "There is something here, there is something... Although I was looking diagonally. Do you know anything about the collection?"

"No," we answered in unison.

He put us quickly in the way of things.

"Timing?" Fedyunkin asked.

"On 1 May, in autumn we are going to hand over to the press."

"Format?"

"In triplicate, at two intervals."

We bowed out.

"But in general, we had a good trip," Mazepa said, lighting a cigarette. - How much time? Oh, we can still catch the train."

"I'm staying," Fedyunkin announced, also lighting a cigarette, the client he wanted to meet, as it turned out, had gone to Leningrad and Fedyunkin was going to follow him by evening train.

"I, perhaps, will also stay," Mazepa said. "Let's go, Fedyunkin, let's look at a personal computer..."

And they went to look at the personal computer in the sector of Bryabrin and I went to the Savelovsky railway station. Trams rolled along Vavilov Street, tinkling. "Frame... frame... frame..." echoed in my head...

Having gathered the next day, we decided not to rely on Pospelov, but to prepare our own collection - "Programmers are joking." Our presentiment did not deceive us: the Pospelov collection did not come out that autumn. Ours, however, either... Some justification for us was the book "The same IMPULSE", published on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the LCTA, 33 years later.

Alexander RASTORGUEV

A short editorial comment. Publishing the next "Report from the past", we drew attention to the round date of the failed enterprise of the authors of the LCTA wall newspaper "Impulse" widely known in narrow circles that somehow resembled the plot of Luis Bunuel's landmark film "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie", whose characters throughout the tape strive to have lunch together, but they never achieve this goal ... In the best traditions of numerology, Bunuel's film was released in 1973, exactly 10 years before the events described by the author.