A must read longform on the pioneer of AI chatbot who became AI's main and earliest detractors, Joseph Weizenbaum (of ELIZA fame here at MIT) by Ben Tarnoff!
Weizenbaum's was a lone voice in the 1970s, and many of his views are as apt now as they were then. Almost the entire article is chock full of quotes, and so here is a thread with quotes and a few of my thoughts interspersed.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai
"There is so much in Weizenbaum’s thinking that is urgently relevant now. Perhaps his most fundamental heresy was the belief that the computer revolution, which Weizenbaum not only lived through but centrally participated in, was actually a counter-revolution."
I too had my early training in computer science, and have come to see it increasingly as counter-revolutionary not even delivering on its promises of economic productivity (topic for another day). With my expertise in neural networks, I should be riding atop the current wave of AI to the bank, instead, I mostly see it as a land of false promises mediated by dangerous levels of silicon valley mythmaking.
1/8
#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum
Karthik Srinivasan /
npub160…76fkd
2023-07-26 04:17:42
Author Public Key
npub160cfnc8ucrqhs3n85wtnhvje5v6sms4jtj0jeg9ltqxgq3meuftq776fkdPublished at
2023-07-26 04:17:42Event JSON
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"content": "A must read longform on the pioneer of AI chatbot who became AI's main and earliest detractors, Joseph Weizenbaum (of ELIZA fame here at MIT) by Ben Tarnoff! \n\nWeizenbaum's was a lone voice in the 1970s, and many of his views are as apt now as they were then. Almost the entire article is chock full of quotes, and so here is a thread with quotes and a few of my thoughts interspersed.\n\nhttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai\n\n\"There is so much in Weizenbaum’s thinking that is urgently relevant now. Perhaps his most fundamental heresy was the belief that the computer revolution, which Weizenbaum not only lived through but centrally participated in, was actually a counter-revolution.\"\n\nI too had my early training in computer science, and have come to see it increasingly as counter-revolutionary not even delivering on its promises of economic productivity (topic for another day). With my expertise in neural networks, I should be riding atop the current wave of AI to the bank, instead, I mostly see it as a land of false promises mediated by dangerous levels of silicon valley mythmaking.\n\n1/8\n\n#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum",
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