Joseph Weizenbaum facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Joseph Weizenbaum
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Weizenbaum in Berlin, 2005
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| Born | 8 January 1923 |
| Died | 5 March 2008 (aged 85) Ludwigsfelde-Gröben, Germany
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| Nationality | German |
| Citizenship | German American |
| Alma mater | Wayne State University |
| Known for | ELIZA Computer ethics |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | MIT Harvard University |
Joseph Weizenbaum (born January 8, 1923 – died March 5, 2008) was a German American computer scientist. He was also a professor at MIT. He is known as one of the people who helped start modern artificial intelligence (AI). The Weizenbaum Award is named after him.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Joseph Weizenbaum was born in Berlin, Germany. His parents were Jewish. In January 1936, his family had to leave Nazi Germany to escape danger. They moved to the United States.
He started studying mathematics in 1941 at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In 1942, he paused his studies to join the United States Army Air Corps. He worked as a meteorologist, which is someone who studies weather. After the war, in 1946, he went back to Wayne State. He earned his bachelor's degree in Mathematics in 1948 and his master's degree in 1950.
Working with Computers
Around 1952, Weizenbaum worked as a research assistant at Wayne State. He helped create both analog computers and digital computers. In 1956, he worked for General Electric. There, he helped develop ERMA. This was a computer system that used special magnetic ink on checks. This allowed banks to process checks automatically.
In 1964, he started working at MIT. He also taught at other famous universities like Harvard and Stanford.
ELIZA: A Talking Computer Program
In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum created a computer program called ELIZA. He named it after a character in a play called Pygmalion. ELIZA was designed to understand and respond to human language. It was one of the first programs that could do this.
ELIZA worked by using simple rules to match patterns in what people typed. Then, it would create a reply. Programs like ELIZA are now called chatbots. One part of ELIZA, called DOCTOR, could talk to people in a way that seemed like a caring psychologist. Weizenbaum based its conversation style on a therapist named Carl Rogers. Rogers used open-ended questions to help patients talk more.
Weizenbaum was surprised that many people took ELIZA seriously. They would even share their personal feelings with it. He once saw his secretary using the program. Even though she knew it was just a computer, she asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so she could talk to ELIZA privately! Many people thought ELIZA was a step towards machines that could truly think. Weizenbaum later tried to explain that this was not what he intended.
Concerns About Artificial Intelligence
As he worked more with computers, Weizenbaum began to think deeply about what artificial intelligence could mean for society. He became one of the main critics of AI. He worried that computers, despite being new technology, might actually slow down social progress.
He used his experience working with Bank of America as an example. He said that computers allowed banks to handle more and more checks. This made banks more efficient. However, it also stopped banks from having to make bigger, more important changes to how they were organized.
Weizenbaum also worried about how computers were used by the military. He called the computer "a child of the military." He believed that words like "the military" and "defense" did not truly describe what these organizations did. He thought that if people used clearer words, like "killings" and "bombings," they would be less likely to support violence so quickly. He wasn't against all fighting, but he wanted people to think carefully about the real meaning of their actions.
Deciding Versus Choosing
In his important 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum shared his mixed feelings about computer technology. He argued that whether computers could be programmed to do human tasks was not the most important question. Instead, he said that deciding what tasks computers should do, and how to measure if they did them well, was a human act. This act depends on human values, which computers do not have.
Weizenbaum made a key difference between "deciding" and "choosing." He said that "deciding" is like a calculation, something a computer can be programmed to do. But "choice" comes from human judgment, not just math. When people let computers make decisions that humans used to make, those people are making a choice based on their own values. This choice will have real effects on the people who are impacted by the computer's decisions.
Later Life and Legacy
Joseph Weizenbaum had four daughters. In 1996, he moved back to Berlin, Germany, near where he grew up. He passed away on March 5, 2008, and was buried in the Weißensee Jewish cemetery in Berlin.
His ideas and concerns about artificial intelligence continue to be important today.
Documentaries About Weizenbaum
- A German documentary film called "Weizenbaum. Rebel at Work." was released in 2007. It was later translated into English.
- Another documentary film, Plug & Pray, released in 2010, also featured Weizenbaum and discussed the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Works
- "ELIZA — A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine," Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9 (1966): 36-45.
- Weizenbaum, Joseph (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. ISBN 978-0-716-70464-5. OCLC 1527521. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1527521.
- Islands in the Cyberstream: Seeking Havens of Reason in a Programmed Society, Sacramento: Litwin Books, 2015 ISBN: 978-1-63400-000-0
See also
In Spanish: Joseph Weizenbaum para niños
- Artificial intelligence and human dignity
- Artificial intelligence
- Dialogue system
- Psychology
