Artificial Vs Human Intelligence

No Computer...not even a calculator !!!

What is common between both scientists in the earlier days and nowadays, is that both should be extremely focused, quick-witted and visionary!?!

However, being a scientist before required a lot more than these characteristics!!!

Formerly, being a scientist requires not only intelligence and talent but also patience and a lot of knowledge in many disciplines. They had no computers to store their data, no optimized chemicals/ kits, and no ready-made appliances and automated machines. They had to make everything they require. For instance; a doctor not only mastered chemicals and herbs to cure people, but also he must have been a very good engineer as he had to build his own diagnostic tools. On the other hand, now everybody is highly specialized in one tiny sub-sub-sub specialty and almost nobody can function when their computers or machines are out-of-order. Definitely, nowadays we have a lot more information than what Einstein would have thought possible. But, we all depend on these kits, chemicals, ready-made materials and machines, and I find that extremely dangerous.

How many people in your laboratory know how to manually prepare their chemicals and how to manually do the techniques?

One day, one of the students asked me "why would anyone read about these manual techniques, when we have all these machines?"

In his mind, he believed that was a waste of time. But for me, I think it is really important to be able to do your research with and also without automation. I am not going to say "What if the world comes to an end and we had to go back to the old techniques!?!", but these manual techniques can be time- and money-saving in some situations and in others you can use it routinely to calibrate your machines. Also, here in Africa, there are a lot of places that do not have the finances to buy highly specialized equipment so the scientists here always master these techniques, even if they have the machines. In my research I insisted to learn the manual techniques first despite that I usually work with automated equipment. Learning these techniques helped me a lot; now I deeply understand my results and I can easily analyze them and also when I make a mistake, it helps me point-out what have I done wrong and in which step and also which chemical should be replaced and replaced by which.

I guess, we can depend on the new technologies - no problem -, but we also have to be careful not to completely rely on these machines and ignore to learn or to teach our students the basic scientific techniques. We should be the scientists and not our analytical equipment and computers.

The machines should help us and not replace us !!!

However that is what I think, I will be happy to hear from you too...what do you think?

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Image Credit: by Alejandro Zorrilal Cruz via Wikimedia Commons.