Computer Power and Human Reason
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 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 | |
| Pages | 300 |
| ISBN | 978-0716704645 |
Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation (1976) is an infuential book by Joseph Weizenbaum that displays the author's ambivalence towards computer technology and makes a case against artificial intelligence as a social project.
Summary
The book begins by considering the computer as a tool and investigating man's relation to tools in general. It then looks at why computers have a unique position as symbolic tools and precisely how computers can manipulate symbols. Having established that computers can simulate any formal model, it shows how the use of computers often involves confusion between reality and computer models. It describes a conceptual framework where computational tasks are seen as deriving the necessary actions to transform an "undesired output" to a "desired output", and discusses how this conceptual framework is visible in computer-influenced studies of natural language, psychology, artificial intelligence. Weizenbaum characterizes this conceptual framework as reducing man to a computer and impoverishing mankind's self-understanding.
Difference between Deciding and Choosing
Weizenbaum lays out the case that 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, he 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
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
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