Computer Power and Human Reason

Computer Power and Human Reason

Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum
Author	Joseph Weizenbaum
Language	English
Genre	non-fiction
Publisher	W. H. Freeman and Company
Publication date	1976
Media type	Print
Pages	300
ISBN	978-0716704645

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) by Joseph Weizenbaum displays the author's ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: the possibility of programming computers to perform one task or another that humans also perform (i.e., whether Artificial Intelligence is achievable or not) is irrelevant to the question of whether computers can be put to a given task. Instead, Weizenbaum asserts that the definition of tasks and the selection of criteria for their completion is a creative act that relies on human values, which cannot come from computers. Weizenbaum makes the crucial distinction between deciding and choosing. Deciding is a computational activity, something that can ultimately be programmed. Choice, however, is the product of judgment, not calculation. In deploying computers to make decisions that humans once made, the agent doing so has made a choice based on their values that will have particular, non-neutral consequences for the subjects who will experience the outcomes of the computerized decisions that the agent has instituted.

See also

• Ethics of artificial intelligence
• Critique of technology

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
• Plug & Pray, Documentary Film on Joseph Weizenbaum and the ethics of technology