[HN Gopher] Not Without Us - Joseph Weizenbaum (1986)
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Not Without Us - Joseph Weizenbaum (1986)
Author : drcwpl
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-02-15 12:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dl.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dl.acm.org)
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| This has been floating around HN for two days and hasn't received
| any comments, but it's an insanely prescient paper much apropos
| the 1800+ comments in threads on "video AI".
| ebcode wrote:
| Thanks for posting this. For those unaware, Weizenbaum wrote one
| of the first chatbots, ELIZA.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weizenbaum
| dyoo1979 wrote:
| Thank you for bringing this up. I had not read this before, but
| it speaks to my deep concerns.
| neilv wrote:
| > _[...] the building next to the one in which I work, the world
| famous Draper Laboratory. [...] devoted almost entirely to
| missile guidance and submarine navigation._
|
| In front of that Draper building, there was a strange pillar,
| which I liked to imagine housed a geo-positioning reference point
| -- perhaps even the origin of a coordinate system. Then, if ever
| there were an ICBM guidance failure, on that fateful day, Draper
| might be ground (0,0,0). Like an engineer standing under the
| bridge they built, as the first trucks drive over it.
|
| I was thinking of that as intentional/conscious by the engineers.
|
| (BTW, I'm not criticizing; only a little dark humor reflection
| upon a grave, world-ending responsibility. Given that nuclear
| weapons were inevitable, I'm glad my country has some, that
| apparently MAD has worked thus far, and that there hasn't yet
| been an apocalyptic incident. I also hope that certain autocratic
| world leaders are taking their vitamins, and won't get even
| nuttier.)
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| considering how close to the edge of extermination we already
| have been brought, calling MAD successful leaves a real bad
| taste in my mouth.
| neilv wrote:
| I had left it at "apparently MAD has worked thus far", not
| getting into the _almost didn 't_. It still might end us.
|
| Also, think of all the past plausible/likely bad scenarios
| that MAD averted, such as involving the Soviets.
|
| I sometimes joke about a utopian future of humanity, all
| peace and love, for thousands of years... until we encounter
| malevolent space aliens. Humanity had lost the ability to
| even reason about such a conflict, unable to imagine many
| options. Fortunately, humanity had maintained the cryogenic
| suspension of Kissinger and other historical figures capable
| of cold-blooded ruthlessness. And there was a Thaw button.
| (In some versions of the story, as soon as the anti-dream
| team wakes up and starts talking, we decide they're even
| worse than the space aliens.)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Not quite the same but you have reminded me of Clarke's The
| City and The Stars.
| flir wrote:
| This is the plot to Demolition Man :D
| RCitronsBroker wrote:
| this paper, without failing, makes me cry.
| neilv wrote:
| A couple decades ago, when I was talking with the inventor of
| some aviation safety stuff, about working with them, he said some
| of their work involves the military, and asked whether I'd be OK
| with that.
|
| I (thinking of some of the better ideals) said something
| favorable about the sense of honor/duty/etc., and that I just
| didn't work on weapons systems nor domestic surveillance. I'd
| actually thought of it before, and those two spaces seemed
| problematic.
|
| Earlier, I'd actually worked (on non-mil things) with someone who
| at previous company had been a manager for a defensive military
| system. Which system everyone had seen on CNN, shooting down
| conventional missiles that some aggressor was launching at
| civilians. Which was great (albeit, CNN sometimes strayed into
| propaganda, and maybe not all the great stories were true).
|
| But, thinking of that great defensive use, I also thought that I
| wouldn't want to someday see on CNN something I worked on being
| used for something terrible. It wouldn't be sufficient to claim
| that I thought the Slaughtertron 3000 would only ever be used for
| good. Even a purely defensive system (Shieldtron 4000) could be
| used to shield an aggressor -- leaving the victims less able to
| defend themselves, and making aggression more viable.
|
| We'd all do well to read things like this article, and think
| about what we choose to work on, and how we do it. Then follow
| through on our better thoughts, in our behavior.
|
| In particular, the tech industry overall has become a festival of
| sociopathy. With many techbros, in moments of reflection,
| rationalizing, "but I gotta feed my family", while pulling down
| quite a lot more money than we need to do that.
|
| That wasn't very defensible when coders were regularly hopping
| jobs with 5-6 figure pay bumps each time, or doing startups that
| essentially involved selling out users and oftentimes later
| investors, ignoring regulations, etc. Even now that jobs are
| looking a lot less certain for most people, we still need to be
| very skeptical of ourselves every time we grasp for rationale.
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