For a bit of a change of pace I am posting my part of a presentation that I will be giving on Joseph Weizenbaum at Uni this coming tuesday. I have been sick for the last week with a very bad flu and now that I am better I going to be swamped with work for the next couple of weeks. I have to prepare a 5000 word document on 5 different articles from Law / IT Journals, and a major assingment on Project Management. Anyways enjoy the presentation 
There are numerous ethical raised by the work of Joseph Weizenbaum that needed to be discussed. His contributions to the field of artificial intelligence and the progressions that have been made with more sophisticated and intelligent software requires further analysis.In an article on "How Artificial Intelligence Works" for abcnews.com, Artificial Intelligence was defined as:
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of designing computers and machines to solve problems just like humans do.”
But the reality of the matter is that no matter how smart / or intelligent a computer is, it will never replace a human being. There are still aspects of humanity that will never be able to digitized.
So the question really is, since artificial intelligence has this inadequacy, is it safe, just and ethical to use artificial intelligence in delicate and personal areas of our lives.
Perhaps the magnitude of this question was not as profound as when Elizza was first developed, but a lot has progressed since Elizza. Today software has been developed and used in the field of medicine where symptoms are typed in and a diagnosis and medical recommendations are provided. Computers are predicting the weather, fireing missiles, exploring mars. The list is endless.
Joseph Weizenbaum discussed some these issues in his now famous book written in 1976 “Computer power and reason”. His conclusion reached already then in response to the above question “is that while Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom.”
Joseph understood that not unbridled progress without recourse to ethical and moral investigation was an undesired path. In his own words “The real question for the Artificial Intelligensia, is not what computers will be able to do, but what we should allow them to do.”
Joseph also had some thoughtful words to the art of education in the computer science field. Below is an extract from his book Computer power and reason regarding the topic”
“I want them [teachers of computer science] to have heard me affirm that the computer is a powerful new metaphor for helping us understand many aspects of the world, but that it enslaves the mind that has no other metaphors and few other resources to call on. The world is many things, and no single framework is large enough to contain them all, neither that of man’s science nor of his poetry, neither that of calculating reason nor that of pure intuition. And just as the love of music does not suffice to enable one to play the violin – one must also master the craft of the instrument and the music itself – so it is not enough to love humanity in order to help it survive. The teacher’s calling to his craft is therefore an honorable one. But he must do more than that: he must teach more than one metaphor, and he must teach more by the example of his conduct than by what he writes on the blackboard. He must teach the limitations of his tools as well as their power.”
I will now hand you over to Elizabeth who will present her interview with Joseph."
