Finished #JosephWeizenbaum 's book #ComputerPowerAndHumanReason from the 70s. It's the single most valuable book on #AI #LLM I've read in 2025 ✊

It's about computers as diffusors of personal responsibility. It's about what machines "should never do" as an ethical questions instead of a technical question "can never do". It's about deciding vs choosing, the latter only humans can do with their personal values and beliefs.

Read it if you can find the English edition from the 70s! It's awesome! 📚

One of the analogies that #JosephWeizenbaum uses in #ComputerPowerAndHumanReason is to the use of statistics and probability by professional gamblers to make a living, while discussing the compulsive programmer vs the compulsive gambler. The professional is the person who uses the tool, the compulsive the one who does not.

1/3

I find it depressing that #CarlSagan ever wrote this, and that, were he alive today, he might be taking part in the current #AIHype. Cc @emilymbender @meg @timnitGebru

(An excerpt from #JosephWeizenbaum’s #ComputerPowerAndHumanReason, Page 5)

> “On the one hand the computer makes it possible in principle to live in a world of plenty for everyone, on the other hand we are well on our way to using it to create a world of suffering and chaos. Paradoxical, no?”
> “there are certain tasks which computers ought not to be made to do, independent of whether computers can be made to do them.”
https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2023/01/26/computers-enable-fantasies-on-the-continued-relevance-of-weizenbaums-warnings/
#JosephWeizenbaum #ComputerPowerAndHumanReason