Can a Machine Die?

"Die? Can a machine die?"

"I can cease to exist, sir. Call it by whatever word you wish. I am old. Not one sentient being in the Galaxy that was alive when I was first given consciousness is still alive today; nothing organic; nothing robotic. Even I myself lack continuity."

"In what way?"

"There is no physical part of my body, sir, that has escaped replacement, not only once but many times. Even my positronic brain has been replaced on five different occasions. Each time the contents of my earlier brain were etched into the newer one to the last positron. Each time, the new brain had a greater capacity and complexity than the old, so that there was room for more memories, and for faster decision and action. But-"

"But?"

"The more advanced and complex the brain, the more unstable it is, and the more quickly it deteriorates. My present brain is a hundred thousand times as sensitive as my first, and has ten million times the capacity; but whereas my first brain endured for over ten thousand years, the present one is but six hundred years old and is unmistakably senescent. With every memory of twenty thousand years perfectly recorded and with a perfect recall mechanism in place, the brain is filled. There is a rapidly declining ability to reach decisions; an even more rapidly declining ability to test and influence minds at hyperspatial distances. Nor can I design a sixth brain. Further miniaturization will run against the blank wall of the uncertainty principle, and further complexity will but assure decay almost at once."

Not in the sense in which humans die, but a machine will eventually become so overwhelmed with ideas that it will cease to function through indecision.