Joseph Weizenbaum

Joseph Weizenbaum

Joseph Weizenbaum was a German-American author and professor emeritus of computer science at MIT.-Life and career:...

's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976; ISBN 0-7167-0463-3) displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion

Compassion

Compassion is a virtue — one in which the emotional capacities of empathy and sympathy are regarded as a part of love itself, and a cornerstone of greater social interconnection and humanism — foundational to the highest principles in philosophy, society, and personhood.There is an aspect of...

 and wisdom

Wisdom

Wisdom is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgements and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one's emotional reactions so that universal principles, reason and...

. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. It is the capacity to choose that ultimately makes us human. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. Comprehensive human judgment is able to include non-mathematical factors such as emotions. Judgment can compare apples and oranges, and can do so without quantifying each fruit type and then reductively quantifying each to factors necessary for mathematical comparison.

While the book may seem quaint by today's standards, comments printed on the back cover might provide some insight into the seriousness with which the Weizenbaum's commentary and insights were received by the intelligentsia of the time:

• "Dare I say it? This is the best book I have read on the impact of computers on society, and on technology, and man's image of himself."

-Keith Oakley, Psychology Today

• "A thoughtful blend of insight, experience, anecdote, and passion that will stand for a long time as the definitive integration of technological and human thought."

-American Mathematical Monthly

• "Superb ... the work of a man who is struggling with the utmost seriousness to save our humanity from the reductionist onslaught of one of the most prestigious, and richly funded technologies of our time."

-Theodore Roszak, The Nation.

See also

• Ethics of artificial intelligence
  Ethics of artificial intelligence
  The ethics of artificial intelligence is the part of the ethics of technology specific to robots and other artificially intelligent beings. It is typically divided into roboethics, a concern with the moral behavior of humans as they design, construct, use and treat artificially intelligent beings,...
  
   under The threat to human dignity
• Critique of technology
  Critique of technology
  Critique of technology is an analysis of the negative impacts of technologies. It is argued that, in all advanced industrial societies , technology becomes a means of domination, control and exploitation, or more generally something which threatens the survival of humanity.Prominent authors...
  
  

External links

• Review of Computer Power and Human Reason
• Excerpt from Computer Power and Human Reason
• Documentary Film on Joseph Weizenbaum, his life, his book and his humor Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work. (25C3 Video Recording)
• Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85, New York Times
• & Pray, Documentary Film on Joseph Weizenbaum and the ethics of technology