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Not to be confused with a VideoGame/HalfLife1 mod [[VideoGame/PoinfOfView of the same name]].
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Not to be confused with a VideoGame/HalfLife1 mod [[VideoGame/PoinfOfView [[VideoGame/PointOfView of the same name]].
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Not to be confused with a VideoGame/HalfLife1 mod [[VideoGame/PoinfOfView of the same name]].
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First published in ''Magazine/BoysLife'' (July 1975 issue) by Creator/IsaacAsimov, this ShortStory is about a boy who helps his father solve a difficult problem facing Multivac.
Roger's father works [[MasterComputer for/at Multivac]] and doesn't usually work on Sundays. But today ''is'' a Sunday and he's not home. Roger goes to visit him because he's worried. Despite normally being able to [[BenevolentAI answer all of humanity's problems]], today they've noticed that [[AIIsACrapshoot Multivac is giving the wrong answers]].
[[OnlyOneName Atkins]] is given time off to go eat with his son, and the two go to the Multivac commissary, getting burgers and fries. He describes the problem to his son, in layman's terms, and why they can't turn Multivac off to check where the problem is, mechanically. Roger suggests that they can fix it by not giving Multivac as much work, letting it "play" for a couple hours each day.
"Point of View" has been republished twice; ''Magazine/IsaacAsimovsScienceFictionMagazine'' (April 1979 issue) and ''Literature/TheCompleteRobot'' (1982).
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!!"Point of View" contains examples of:
* AffectionateGestureToTheHead: Roger's head gets tousled by his father when he gets worried that Multivac will be shut down due to errors. His father is trying to reassure him that everything will be fine.
* AIIsACrapshoot: Multivac, [[MasterComputer the computer as large as a city]], is malfunctioning in some unknown way, causing it to give the wrong answers to the problems given to it. Roger's dad describes it as being half-smart; smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to identify what it is doing wrong. Unless they can figure out a way to make sure Multivac is working correctly, they won't be able to use it at all because they [[SuperIntelligence can't really tell when Multivac is wrong, only when it's inconsistent]].
* AndroidsArePeopleToo: Roger humanizes Multivac by describing it as another kid, and as anyone knows, a kid's got to ''play'', too.
* BeepingComputers: Roger hears Multivac "chuckling and whirring all about" when he visits. We know that Multivac is working because of all the noise.
* BenevolentAI: Multivac is designed to answer all of humanity's problems. Unfortunately, it is currently [[AIIsACrapshoot giving wrong answers]] to the questions being put to it. They can't afford to shut it down because they depend on the answers too much.
* ComputerEqualsTapedrive: When the story was published in ''Magazine/BoysLife'', it was accompanied by an illustration of the [[FloatingHeadSyndrome heads of Roger and Atkins]] floating in front of circuit boards and a tapedrive.
* FloatingHeadSyndrome: When the story was published in ''Magazine/BoysLife'', it was accompanied by an illustration of the heads of Roger and Atkins floating in front of circuit boards and [[ComputerEqualsTapedrive a tapedrive]].
* MasterComputer: Multivac is so large that the programmers and support personnel live in the property, and there's enough people that it counts as a small city. For just one computer.
-->[A]ll the people who worked with Multivac, the giant computer, lived with their families right on the grounds. They made up a little city by themselves, a city of people that solved all the world's problems.
* InSeriesNickname: Roger's father calls him "old sport", a common nickname for kids in the 1950s.
* OnlyOneName: The two main characters are a boy (Roger) and his father (Atkins). It is unclear if Atkins is their family name (which would make the father an UnnamedParent) or if that is his first name (which would mean we only know Roger's first name).
* OrwellianRetcon: Between the original publication in ''Magazine/BoysLife'' magazine and republishing the story in ''Literature/TheCompleteRobot'', Dr Asimov added in a few more words/sentences, such as "The corridors were a lot emptier than on weekdays, so it was easy to find where the people were working." The changes don't affect the story much, aside from making it slightly longer (the original story all fit on one page).
* SuperIntelligence: Atkins, explaining how smart Multivac is to his son, describes it as being made with the [[AIIsACrapshoot "wrong smartness"]]. It can figure out answers that would take the programmers a thousand years to calculate, but can go wrong in unexpected ways. He claims Multivac is half-smart; smart as a man would be able to explain what's wrong, dumb as a machine and it could only go wrong in predictable ways. This is a realistic depiction of a basic Artificial General Superintelligence.
* {{Technobabble}}: There are two fictional programmer tools for the Multivac engineers to use; current-pattern analyzer and Platt-integrals. Technically, a pocket-computer was also fictional at the time, [[TechnologyMarchesOn but has become a pervasive feature of life since then]].
* TitleDrop: Roger's dad initially describes Multivac's [[SuperIntelligence half-smart]] mistakes as [[AIIsACrapshoot being an idiot]]. Roger suggests that maybe it's more like being a kid, and his father says, "That's an interesting point of view" and asks him to elaborate.
----
Roger's father works [[MasterComputer for/at Multivac]] and doesn't usually work on Sundays. But today ''is'' a Sunday and he's not home. Roger goes to visit him because he's worried. Despite normally being able to [[BenevolentAI answer all of humanity's problems]], today they've noticed that [[AIIsACrapshoot Multivac is giving the wrong answers]].
[[OnlyOneName Atkins]] is given time off to go eat with his son, and the two go to the Multivac commissary, getting burgers and fries. He describes the problem to his son, in layman's terms, and why they can't turn Multivac off to check where the problem is, mechanically. Roger suggests that they can fix it by not giving Multivac as much work, letting it "play" for a couple hours each day.
"Point of View" has been republished twice; ''Magazine/IsaacAsimovsScienceFictionMagazine'' (April 1979 issue) and ''Literature/TheCompleteRobot'' (1982).
----
!!"Point of View" contains examples of:
* AffectionateGestureToTheHead: Roger's head gets tousled by his father when he gets worried that Multivac will be shut down due to errors. His father is trying to reassure him that everything will be fine.
* AIIsACrapshoot: Multivac, [[MasterComputer the computer as large as a city]], is malfunctioning in some unknown way, causing it to give the wrong answers to the problems given to it. Roger's dad describes it as being half-smart; smart enough to go wrong in very complicated ways, but not smart enough to identify what it is doing wrong. Unless they can figure out a way to make sure Multivac is working correctly, they won't be able to use it at all because they [[SuperIntelligence can't really tell when Multivac is wrong, only when it's inconsistent]].
* AndroidsArePeopleToo: Roger humanizes Multivac by describing it as another kid, and as anyone knows, a kid's got to ''play'', too.
* BeepingComputers: Roger hears Multivac "chuckling and whirring all about" when he visits. We know that Multivac is working because of all the noise.
* BenevolentAI: Multivac is designed to answer all of humanity's problems. Unfortunately, it is currently [[AIIsACrapshoot giving wrong answers]] to the questions being put to it. They can't afford to shut it down because they depend on the answers too much.
* ComputerEqualsTapedrive: When the story was published in ''Magazine/BoysLife'', it was accompanied by an illustration of the [[FloatingHeadSyndrome heads of Roger and Atkins]] floating in front of circuit boards and a tapedrive.
* FloatingHeadSyndrome: When the story was published in ''Magazine/BoysLife'', it was accompanied by an illustration of the heads of Roger and Atkins floating in front of circuit boards and [[ComputerEqualsTapedrive a tapedrive]].
* MasterComputer: Multivac is so large that the programmers and support personnel live in the property, and there's enough people that it counts as a small city. For just one computer.
-->[A]ll the people who worked with Multivac, the giant computer, lived with their families right on the grounds. They made up a little city by themselves, a city of people that solved all the world's problems.
* InSeriesNickname: Roger's father calls him "old sport", a common nickname for kids in the 1950s.
* OnlyOneName: The two main characters are a boy (Roger) and his father (Atkins). It is unclear if Atkins is their family name (which would make the father an UnnamedParent) or if that is his first name (which would mean we only know Roger's first name).
* OrwellianRetcon: Between the original publication in ''Magazine/BoysLife'' magazine and republishing the story in ''Literature/TheCompleteRobot'', Dr Asimov added in a few more words/sentences, such as "The corridors were a lot emptier than on weekdays, so it was easy to find where the people were working." The changes don't affect the story much, aside from making it slightly longer (the original story all fit on one page).
* SuperIntelligence: Atkins, explaining how smart Multivac is to his son, describes it as being made with the [[AIIsACrapshoot "wrong smartness"]]. It can figure out answers that would take the programmers a thousand years to calculate, but can go wrong in unexpected ways. He claims Multivac is half-smart; smart as a man would be able to explain what's wrong, dumb as a machine and it could only go wrong in predictable ways. This is a realistic depiction of a basic Artificial General Superintelligence.
* {{Technobabble}}: There are two fictional programmer tools for the Multivac engineers to use; current-pattern analyzer and Platt-integrals. Technically, a pocket-computer was also fictional at the time, [[TechnologyMarchesOn but has become a pervasive feature of life since then]].
* TitleDrop: Roger's dad initially describes Multivac's [[SuperIntelligence half-smart]] mistakes as [[AIIsACrapshoot being an idiot]]. Roger suggests that maybe it's more like being a kid, and his father says, "That's an interesting point of view" and asks him to elaborate.
----
