Values, decisions, judgements: are they fit for optimization?
"For Weizenbaum, judgment involves choices that are guided by values. These values are acquired through the course of our life experience and are necessarily qualitative: they cannot be captured in code. Calculation, by contrast, is quantitative. It uses a technical calculus to arrive at a decision. Computers are only capable of calculation, not judgment. This is because they are not human, which is to say, they do not have a human history – they were not born to mothers, they did not have a childhood, they do not inhabit human bodies or possess a human psyche with a human unconscious – and so do not have the basis from which to form values."
"(It would be a “monstrous obscenity”, Weizenbaum wrote, to let a computer perform the functions of a judge in a legal setting or a psychiatrist in a clinical one.)"
This is as succinct an argument to make for why we should not be making value judgements that humans are "meat machines" or "biological automata" or just a "bag of neurons" with a body attached, or the urge to suggest that we are neither special or unique since every trait that a human possesses is now replicable by a machine. The one word is VALUE and that's quite a loaded word!
5/8
#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum
Karthik Srinivasan /
npub160…76fkd
2023-07-26 04:18:59
in reply to nevent1q…xzpa
Author Public Key
npub160cfnc8ucrqhs3n85wtnhvje5v6sms4jtj0jeg9ltqxgq3meuftq776fkdPublished at
2023-07-26 04:18:59Event JSON
{
"id": "eed7a855eae67206038c6470c3a0f2d537fd78ea674d2bab1d07c1cca568b503",
"pubkey": "d3f099e0fcc0c1784667a3973bb259a3350dc2b25c9f2ca0bf580c804779e256",
"created_at": 1690337939,
"kind": 1,
"tags": [
[
"e",
"47e4bc4d399e3fe01cc30d4b3d2decce9b83a641b4a089190e4a2414ce17ea3b",
"wss://relay.mostr.pub",
"reply"
],
[
"t",
"ai"
],
[
"t",
"historyofai"
],
[
"t",
"computing"
],
[
"t",
"critique"
],
[
"t",
"technology"
],
[
"t",
"ideology"
],
[
"t",
"manvsmachine"
],
[
"t",
"mit"
],
[
"t",
"weizenbaum"
],
[
"mostr",
"https://neuromatch.social/users/skarthik/statuses/110777987222068036"
]
],
"content": "Values, decisions, judgements: are they fit for optimization?\n\n\"For Weizenbaum, judgment involves choices that are guided by values. These values are acquired through the course of our life experience and are necessarily qualitative: they cannot be captured in code. Calculation, by contrast, is quantitative. It uses a technical calculus to arrive at a decision. Computers are only capable of calculation, not judgment. This is because they are not human, which is to say, they do not have a human history – they were not born to mothers, they did not have a childhood, they do not inhabit human bodies or possess a human psyche with a human unconscious – and so do not have the basis from which to form values.\"\n\n\"(It would be a “monstrous obscenity”, Weizenbaum wrote, to let a computer perform the functions of a judge in a legal setting or a psychiatrist in a clinical one.)\"\n\nThis is as succinct an argument to make for why we should not be making value judgements that humans are \"meat machines\" or \"biological automata\" or just a \"bag of neurons\" with a body attached, or the urge to suggest that we are neither special or unique since every trait that a human possesses is now replicable by a machine. The one word is VALUE and that's quite a loaded word!\n\n5/8\n\n#AI #HistoryOfAI #Computing #Critique #Technology #Ideology #ManVsMachine #MIT #Weizenbaum",
"sig": "2d9d699fb70dc9a3a2d7ef7b6a5cfb4c841e1cc5063d7f411fcfac0d0b185d7adc9eb18364dfdcd1e5e8c84b328fe4c5f125e2b87bf5a1594fea404a6f4e1970"
}