Astounding Science Fiction, British Edition — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HIDE! HIDE! WITCH! 23 lifted either by the knowledge that it took over three thousand years of art painting for a man to move from the side view of the foot, as portrayed by the Egyptians, to the front view, as discovered by the Greeks. And almost another five hundred years to move from the profile of the face to a front view. It would be difficult to achieve this for Bossy. Still, there was no new principles involved, simply a coding method which would tell Bossy that one object was truly a rectangle seen head-on, and another which appeared to be the same was really a square seen at an angle. It was the same kind of lateral coding which would solve this. The key to Bossy’s first overt re- action to stimuli came from one of the younger assistant professors one night in the common room. He was ruefully telling how his new baby responded to his wife’s hands with contentment and to his hands with fright. The baby was much too young to recognize the difference between mama and papa. it must be familiarity versus unfamili- arity in the manner of touch. A few days later, safety guards were installed around Bossy. They had long since installed the yes-no principle to be found in other cybernetic machines. There was jubilation and something approaching awe when Bossy demon- strated it could learn—and learn with only one trial. The safety guards were keyed to the reject pattern, but when Hoskins, who installed the guards, depressed the accept key for his own hands, thereafter the machine threw up its guards when approached by alien hands, but left them down for Hoskins’ hands. Perhaps it was mass, or shape codes. Perhaps it was color. Perhaps it was scent, for Hos- kins had been working around the machine when scent codes were being fed into it. Still Hoskins had no code of his own scent as differing from others. Scent was out, for the machine had no equipment whereby it might do its own coding. They were not sure just what pro-~ cess had occurred which made Bossy distinguish safe hands from unsafe hands. She had the sense receptors to observe the outside world. She had the codes, a great many and more being added constantly, whereby through keyed harmonics she associated new perception with old. Some moves had | been made to key her with similarities and differences. The mechanism was there to compare the new with the old and to determine the identities and the differences. And now she had dem- onstrated that she could distinguish through the sense receptors and the established coding. Further, she had demonstrated that she could take automatic action. The men cautioned one another, again and again, that they must not fall into the habit of thinking the machine could do anything they hadn’t keyed it to do. It had no sense. None at all. Really, this throwing up the bars to keep alien hands out was no more than any selenium cell would do— well, modified by coding. Even without Joe’s warning glance, Billings felt they were reassuring one another on this point perhaps a little too much. He noticed, too, that the gender changed overnight from it to she. But it was several days before he noticed that Gunther had begun to stammer the name to B-b-b-ossy, each time he said it, although the man . never stammered on anything else. And Hoskins always hesitated with an audible “ah” before saying the name. The shadows beyond the door began to stir and swell, and seemed to writhe around one another. Connicloooks.e@ im