#joseph weizenbaum

[computerwives]

light reading - I have only just started the introduction but I think they should teach this in schools. Like to high schoolers.

[eagle-writes]

"I had not realized ... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people" - Joseph Weizenbaum, inventor of ELIZA, talking half a century ago

[thatswhywelovegermany]

Das Internet ist ein großer Misthaufen, in dem man allerdings auch kleine Schätze und Perlen finden kann.

The internet is a big dunghill, but you can also find small treasures and pearls in it.

Joseph Weizenbaum (1923 – 2008), German-American informatician

[noosphe-re]

The computer programmer is a creator of universes for which he alone is the lawgiver. No playwright, no stage director, no emperor, however powerful, has ever exercised such absolute authority to arrange a stage or field of battle and to command such unswervingly dutiful actors or troops.

Joseph Weizenbaum

[computerwives]

Our society's growing reliance on computer systems that were initially intended to "help" people make analyses and decisions, but which have long since both surpassed the understanding of their users and become indispensable to them, is a very serious development. It has two important consequences. First, decisions are made with the aid of, and sometimes entirely by, computers whose programs no one any longer knows explicitly or understands. Hence no one can know the criteria or the rules on which such decisions are based. Second, the systems of rules and criteria that are embodied in such computer systems become immune to change, because, in the absence of a detailed understanding of the inner workings of a computer system, any substantial modification of it is very likely to render the whole system inoperative and possibly unrestorable. Such computer systems can therefore only grow. And their growth and the increasing reliance placed on them is accompanied by an increasing legitimation of their "knowledge base." […] One would expect that large numbers of individuals, living in a society in which anonymous, hence irresponsible, forces formulate the large questions of the day and circumscribe the range of possible answers, would experience a kind of impotence and fall victim to a mindless rage. And surely we see that expectation fulfilled all around us, on university campuses and in factories, in homes and offices. Its manifestations are workers' sabotage of the products of their labor, unrest and aimlessness among students, street crime, escape into drug-induced dream worlds, and so on. Yet an alternative response is also very pervasive; as seen from one perspective, it appears to be resignation, but from another perspective it is what Erich Fromm long ago called "escape from freedom." The "good German" in Hitler's time could sleep more soundly because he "didn't know" about Dachau. He didn't know, he told us later, because the highly organized Nazi system kept him from knowing. (Curiously, though, I, as an adolescent in that same Germany, knew about Dachau. I thought I had reason to fear it.) Of course, the real reason the good German didn't know is that he never felt it to be his responsibility to ask what had happened to his Jewish neighbor whose apartment suddenly became available. The university professor whose dream of being promoted to the status of Ordinarius was suddenly fulfilled didn't ask how his precious chair had suddenly become vacant. Finally, all Germans became victims of what had befallen them. Today even the most highly placed managers represent themselves as innocent victims of a technology for which they accept no responsibility and which they do not even pretend to understand (One must wonder, though, why it never occurred to Admiral Moorer to ask what effect the millions of tons of bombs the computer said were being dropped on Viet Nam were having.) The American Secretary of State, Dr. Henry Kissinger, while explaining that he could hardly have known of the "White House horrors" revealed by the Watergate investigation, mourned over "the awfulness of events and the tragedy that has befallen so many people."

-- Joseph Weizenbaum, Computer Power and Human Reason (1976)

[literarypm]

Quote

Joseph Weizenbaum on what a computer might do...

[levysoft]

Le notizie sono il solito trantran: infurianti, demoralizzanti, o noiose; per fortuna ogni tanto si riesce a portare a casa una piccola vittoria.

Walter Vannini, in occasione del 60° anniversario della creazione di ELIZA, che cade proprio nel 2026, è riuscito a convincere un editore italiano a fare una ristampa de Il potere del computer e la ragione umana (irreperibile da quasi 35 anni), il libro di Joseph Weizenbaum, informatico tedesco-statunitense e creatore  appunto di ELIZA, considerato il primo chatbot, nato nel 1966.

La nuova edizione dovrebbe arrivare in estate, sia in versione cartacea sia in formato ePub. Inoltre, il libro sarà disponibile anche al Linux Day di Pordenone, il prossimo 24 ottobre, con uno speciale adesivo di DataKnightmare. Per l’occasione sarà presente anche Vannini.

Per dirne una, fu Weizenbaum a scrivere:

Il punto non è se una macchina possa ragionare come un essere umano. Il punto è se debba farlo.

[theeleventhsignofthezodiac]

Computer Power and Human Reasoning, Joseph Weizenbaum, W. H. Freeman and Co., 1976