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by Randy CassinghamRandy Cassingham's Honorary Unsubscribe Recognizes the Unknown, the Forgotten and the Obscure People who Had an Impact on Our Lives
Joseph Weizenbaum
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A professor of computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1965 Weizenbaum wrote a program that mimicked understanding of human language. ELIZA (named after the My Fair Lady character) acted like a therapist, prompting human users to talk about their problems. But Weizenbaum was horrified when he saw students took the program seriously, pouring their hearts out to the unthinking, unfeeling computer. "No other organism, and certainly no computer, can be made to confront genuine human problems in human terms," Weizenbaum said later. His critiques of artificial intelligence drove a wedge between him and the rest of the A.I. community, and he took the title "heretic" with pride. He received the Award for Professional and Social Responsibility given by the Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility in 1988. Weizenbaum moved back to Germany in 1996; he had fled as a boy with his family to escape the Nazis. He died March 5 from cancer in Germany at 85.
From This is True for 9 March 2008
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