Artificial Intelligence In Daniel Keyes 'Flowers For Algernon'

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If you were given a chance to have Artificial Intelligence surgery and knew that no matter what you were going to lose it all at some point and return to your previous I.Q. would you? For the sake of science? “Flowers for Algernon” is a science fiction story written by Daniel Keyes. The story is about a 37 year old man named Charlie Gordon. Charlie is a mentally challenged man and has an I.Q. of 68. His drive and determination leads him to be picked for this experiment. He begins to learn more and more every day. After about 4 months his I.Q. triples. But very rapidly he starts to regress. Even though he lost all of intelligence Charlie Gordon still was truly better off having the surgery because he got to do amazing things like teach treasurable life lessons, experience great emotions, and contribute to science.
My first reason that Charlie was right to have the surgery is that he got to teach life lessons to a lot of people and he probably changed some people’s lives. At the beginning of the story Charlie thinks that he has a couple of friends names Joe and Frank. Joe and Frank make fun of and bully Charlie but he does not know. After the surgery charlie comes to realize that his “friends” aren’t really his friends. Through this …show more content…

Charlie was curious about what this experiment was doing to him so started doing research of his own. During the process he discovered the Algernon-Gordon effect. But Charlie wasn’t mad about it. He was grateful and happy that he got to help with this. For example, “Yet for the sake of science I am grateful for the little bit that I here add to the knowledge of the function of the human mind and of the laws governing the artificial intelligence”, (Keyes 239). So after all Charlie Gordon was at all mad or sad about not being able to keep the intelligence that the surgery caused. So if he went through all of this and still thought it was a good idea, why wouldn’t

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