JED%SU-AI@sri-unix.UUCP (07/17/83)
From: Jim Davidson <JED@SU-AI>
[Reprinted from SU-BBoard.]
The August issue of Science Digest has an interview with Joseph
Weizenbaum.
He starts off by saying that the current popularity for personal
computers is something of a fad. He claims that many of the uses of
PC's, such as storing recipes or recording appointments, are tasks
that are better done manually.
Then the discussion turns to AI:
Science Digest: You know, many of the computer's biggest promoters are
university computer scientists themselves, particularly in the more
exotic areas of computer science, like artificial intelligence. Roger
Schank of Yale has set up a company, Cognitive Systems, that hopes to
market computer investment counselors, computer will-writers,
computers that can actually mimic a human's performance of a job.
[JED--but they have real trouble locating Bibb County.] What do you
think of artificial intelligence entering the market place?
Joseph Weizenbaum: I suppose first of all that the word "mimicking" is
fairly significant. These machines are not realizing human thought
processes; they're mimicking them. And I think what's being worked on
these days resembles the language, understanding and production of
human beings only very superficially. By the way, who needs a
computer will-maker?
SD: Some people can't afford a lawyer.
JW: The poor will be grateful to Dr. Schank for thinking of them...
..
SD: Yet, you know Dr. Schank's firm is videotaping humans in the hope
that by this means it can create a program which closely models the
expertise of the individual.
JW: That attitude displays such a degree of arrogance, such hubris
and, furthermore, a great deal of contempt for human beings. To think
that one can take a very wise teacher, for example, and by observing
her capture the essence of that person to any significant degree is
simply absurd. I'd say people who have that ambition, people who that
that it's going to be that easy or possible at all, are simply
deluded.
..
SD: Does it bother you that other computer scientists are marketing
artificial intelligence?
JW: Yes, it bothers me. It bothers me to the extent that these
commercial efforts are characterized at the same time as disinterested
science, the search for knowledge for knowledge's sake. And it isn't.
It's done for money. These people are spending the only capital
science has to offer: its good name. And once we lose that we've
lost everything.