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From [1]: Weizenbaum was shocked to discover that many users were taking his program seriously and were opening their hearts to it. The experience prompted him

From [1]: Weizenbaum was shocked to discover that many users were taking his program seriously and were opening their hearts to it. The experience prompted him to think philosophically about the implications of artificial intelligence and, later, to become a critic of it. In his 1976 book, "Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation," Weizenbaum suggested that it could be both dangerous and immoral to assume computers could eventually take over any role, given enough processing power and the right programming. "No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms," he wrote. [1] - https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-14-me-weizenbaum14-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-mar-14-me-weize...

ecpottinger 4y ago
I wrote a different program called SAM - Simulated Artificial Mentality. It looked for common strings inside a sentence and responded with one of 5 random choose sentences. It had the ability to add new sentences as it was used so over time it got better and better. What got me was that it was less than 100 lines of BASIC code, yet I had people spending over an hour typing with it. And one girl was in tears as she was busy with it talking about her breakup with her boy friend. Note the database of answers was over 2000 questions, I think I still have the paper tape with the original program even.
abrax3141 4y ago
McCarthy thought Weizenbaum was a crank: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1045264.1045265 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1045264.1045265 "This moralistic and incoherent book uses computer science and technology as an illustration to support the view promoted by Lewis Mumford, Theodore Roszak, and Jacques Ellul, that science has led to an immoral view of man and the world. I am frightened by its arguments that certain research should not be done if it is based on or might result in an "obscene" picture of the world and man. Worse yet, the book's notion of "obscenity" is vague enough to admit arbitrary interpretations by activist bureaucrats."
- tokai 4y ago
  hah point 6 in their review is interesting. >It seems exceedingly unlikely that the v e r y difficult problems of intelligence can be solved by "hackers" without a deep theory. Guess they were very wrong.
  - abrax3141 4y ago
    I can’t tell if you’re joking. If not, what very difficult problem of intelligence have hackers solved? (Of course, I can weasel out by just redefining “very difficult” no matter what you say. :-)

ecpottinger 4y ago

I wrote a different program called SAM - Simulated Artificial Mentality. It looked for common strings inside a sentence and responded with one of 5 random choose sentences. It had the ability to add new sentences as it was used so over time it got better and better. What got me was that it was less than 100 lines of BASIC code, yet I had people spending over an hour typing with it. And one girl was in tears as she was busy with it talking about her breakup with her boy friend. Note the database of answers was over 2000 questions, I think I still have the paper tape with the original program even.

abrax3141 4y ago

McCarthy thought Weizenbaum was a crank: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1045264.1045265 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1045264.1045265 "This moralistic and incoherent book uses computer science and technology as an illustration to support the view promoted by Lewis Mumford, Theodore Roszak, and Jacques Ellul, that science has led to an immoral view of man and the world. I am frightened by its arguments that certain research should not be done if it is based on or might result in an "obscene" picture of the world and man. Worse yet, the book's notion of "obscenity" is vague enough to admit arbitrary interpretations by activist bureaucrats."

tokai 4y ago
hah point 6 in their review is interesting. >It seems exceedingly unlikely that the v e r y difficult problems of intelligence can be solved by "hackers" without a deep theory. Guess they were very wrong.
- abrax3141 4y ago
  I can’t tell if you’re joking. If not, what very difficult problem of intelligence have hackers solved? (Of course, I can weasel out by just redefining “very difficult” no matter what you say. :-)