[Infowarrior] - Inventor of 'ELIZA' program dead

[Richard Forno]

March 13, 2008
Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85
By JOHN MARKOFF
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/europe/13weizenbaum.html?pagewanted=
print

Joseph Weizenbaum, whose famed conversational computer program, Eliza,
foreshadowed the potential of artificial intelligence, but who grew
skeptical about the potential for technology to improve the human condition,
died on March 5 in Gröben, Germany. He was 85.

The cause was complications of cancer, said his daughter Sharon Weizenbaum.

Eliza, written while Mr. Weizenbaum was a professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology in 1964 and 1965 and named after Eliza Doolittle,
who learned proper English in ³Pygmalion² and ³My Fair Lady,² was a
groundbreaking experiment in the study of human interaction with machines.

The program made it possible for a person typing in plain English at a
computer terminal to interact with a machine in a semblance of a normal
conversation. To dispense with the need for a large real-world database of
information, the software parodied the part of a Rogerian therapist,
frequently reframing a client¹s statements as questions.

In fact, the responsiveness of the conversation was an illusion, because
Eliza was programmed simply to respond to certain key words and phrases.
That would lead to wild non sequiturs and bizarre detours, but Mr.
Weizenbaum later said that he was stunned to discover that his students and
others became deeply engrossed in conversations with the program,
occasionally revealing intimate personal details.

³It was amazing the extent that people did not understand they were talking
to a computer,² said Robert Fano, emeritus professor of electrical
engineering and computer science at M.I.T. In the wake of the creation of
Eliza, which was described in a technical paper in January 1966, a group of
M.I.T. scientists, including Claude Shannon, a pioneer in the field of
cybernetics, met in Concord, Mass., to discuss the social implications of
the phenomenon, Mr. Fano said.

The seductiveness of the conversations alarmed Mr. Weizenbaum, who came to
believe that an obsessive reliance on technology was indicative of a moral
failing in society, an observation rooted in his experiences as a child
growing up in Nazi Germany.

In 1976, he sketched out a humanist critique of computer technology in his
book ³Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation.² The
book did not argue against the possibility of artificial intelligence but
rather was a passionate criticism of systems that substituted automated
decision-making for the human mind. In the book, he argued that computing
served as a conservative force in society by propping up bureaucracies as
well as by redefining the world in a reductionist sense, by restricting the
potential of human relationships.

³He raised questions about what kinds of relationships we want to have with
machines very early,² said Sherry Turkle, a professor in the program in
science, technology and society at M.I.T. who taught courses with Mr.
Weizenbaum on the social implications of technology.

Mr. Weizenbaum also believed that there were transcendent qualities in the
human experience that could not be duplicated in interactions with machines.
He described it in his book as ³the wordless glance that a father and mother
share over the bed of their sleeping child,² Ms. Turkle said.

The book drove a wedge between Mr. Weizenbaum and other members of the
artificial intelligence research community. In his later years he said he
came to take pride in his self-described status as a ³heretic,² estranged
from the insular community of elite computer researchers.

Joseph Weizenbaum was born on Jan. 8, 1923, in Berlin. He was the second son
of Jechiel Weizenbaum, a furrier, and his wife, Henrietta. The family was
forced to leave Berlin in 1935 when the Nazis enacted anti-Semitic
legislation, and they emigrated the next year from Bremen, Germany, to the
United States.

He began studies in mathematics at Wayne State University in Detroit in
1941, but left the next year to join the Army Air Corps, in which he served
as a meteorologist. After the war he returned to complete his studies at the
mathematics department, where he worked on the development and programming
of the first large computers.

In 1952, he went into industry, working on an early General Electric
computer development project for the Bank of America. In 1962, he was
invited to become a visiting professor at M.I.T. and in 1970 became a
professor of computer science at the school.

Attracted by his childhood experiences and the German language, Mr.
Weizenbaum decided to return to Germany in 1996. His social criticism of
computing technology was warmly received by a younger generation there. Much
honored in German, he spoke frequently on the political and social
consequences of technology.

His marriage to Ruth Manes Weizenbaum ended in divorce. Besides his daughter
Sharon, of Amherst, Mass., he is survived by three other daughters: Miriam,
of Providence, R.I.; Naomi, of Gröben; and Pm, of Seattle.