Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 475.
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[1] From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.469: ELIZA's potential (131)
[2] From: David Berry <D.M.Berry@sussex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.472: ELIZA's potential (21)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-03-01 11:08:29+00:00
From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.469: ELIZA's potential
hi Willard,
your message is i think an explanation and ...complication of the last
lines of the passage by J. Weizenbaum:
> This insight led me to attach new importance to questions of the relationship
> between the individual and the computer, and hence to resolve to think
> about them
you invite us to think about the relation between the individual and the
computer. this relation is somehow summarized by your words
> Google and later software uses the mass of random available text. It does
> fairly well helping to locate stuff and people, but there's simply too much
> noise to get close to Calvino's storyteller's imagined effectiveness. Or is
> 'noise' not a problem but an opportunity?
and the effect of the noise is the necessity to think (again) about the
relation between the individual and the computer.
would everything be plain and perfectly sound, there would be no need to
think: just use.
the big thing is that the AI systems push us to rethink about what
'before' we considered obvious: when you breathe in normal conditions
you are not aware of the air and its quality; when you are climbing high
on a mountain the act of breathing is the most important one (if you
don't breathe properly you can no more move, literally).
so,
> If clearing the mind or actually coming up with good advice does not nail the
> objective well enough, how would you describe an objective worth the candle?
an objective worth the candle would be to understand (or at least to
grab) the whole picture and act consequently, like with diamonds: there
are war diamonds, and they are banned and there are legitimate diamonds.
another objective would be that of building the fundaments of a new
humanism in the time of AI where apparently thinking is no more specific
to humans: so what really is thought? what does "to think" mean? is "the
human" fungible, replaceable, if machines "think"? which would be the
consequences?
much has to do, probably, with the unduly blurry boundaries between
artefact and subject: AI systems are undeniably artefacts but we are
fascinated by the myth of the not human becoming human.
and the artefact (AI system) which start to resemble its maker (human)
in his most elusive qualities (thought) which are at the same time
fascinantes et tremendae expresses the sacred of a laic society.
Maurizio
Il 29/02/24 07:39, Humanist ha scritto:
> Date: 2024-02-29 06:28:35+00:00
> From: Willard McCarty<willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
> Subject: asking questions
>
> I suspect everyone here, or nearly so, knows the story of Joseph
> Weizenbaum's secretary but will summarise it as a reminder. In Computer
> Power and Human Reason (1976, pp. 6f), he describes reactions to the
> DOCTOR version of his ELIZA software, which he wrote in order to show
> everyone how simple it is to fake natural language conversation. He was
> surprised, indeed shocked at the reactions:
>> I was startled to see how quickly and how very deeply people
>> conversing with DOCTOR became emotionally involved with the computer
>> and how unequivocally they anthropomorphized it. Once my secretary,
>> who had watched me work on the program for many months and therefore
>> surely knew it to be merely a computer program, started conversing
>> with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked me to leave
>> the room. Another time, I suggested I might rig the system so that I
>> could examine all conversations anyone had had with it, say,
>> overnight. I was promptly bombarded with accusations that what I
>> proposed amounted to spying on people's most intimate thoughts; clear
>> evidence that people were conversing with the computer as if it were
>> a person who could be appropriately and usefully addressed in
>> intimate terms. I knew of course that people form all sorts of
>> emotional bonds to machines, for example, to musical instruments,
>> motorcycles, and cars. And I knew from long experience that the
>> strong emotional ties many programmers have to their computers are
>> often formed after only short exposures to their machines. What I had
>> not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple
>> computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite
>> normal people. This insight led me to attach new importance to
>> questions of the relationship between the individual and the
>> computer, and hence to resolve to think about them.
> Let us suppose, all these many years later, that we were designing
> something like ELIZA, but rather than the psychotherapeutic ambitions
> that ELIZA stirred at that time we wanted something that would help you
> or me shed our assumptions about a research problem, say. Within a
> society where a body of wisdom literature is the go-to authority, such
> as the 'praise poetry' of certain African societies, we might come up
> with software based on Italo Calvino's description of the storyteller
> who endlessly recombines folkloric elements to produce combinations that
> will sometimes jolt the listener into a new awareness of his or her
> situation. The recombinant potential of our machine comes to mind.
> Google and later software uses the mass of random available text. It
> does fairly well helping to locate stuff and people, but there's simply
> too much noise to get close to Calvino's storyteller's imagined
> effectiveness. Or is 'noise' not a problem but an opportunity?
>
> What would the design of 21st-century software for clearing the mind or
> actually coming up with good advice look like? How would it manage to
> address the individual asking the questions? If clearing the mind or
> actually coming up with good advice does not nail the objective well
> enough, how would you describe an objective worth the candle?
>
> Comments?
>
> Yours,
> WM
>
>
>
> --
> Willard McCarty,
> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
> Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews; Humanist
> www.mccarty.org.uk
------------------------------------------------------------------------
é imperioso mantermos a esperança mesmo quando
a dureza ou aspereza da realidade sugira o contrário
paulo freire
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maurizio Lana
Università del Piemonte Orientale
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2024-03-01 09:30:49+00:00
From: David Berry <D.M.Berry@sussex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.472: ELIZA's potential
For those interesting in the history of ELIZA we have a project website
documenting our rediscovery of the *original* ELIZA source code (after over 50
years!) and a working reconstruction you can test that is extremely accurate to
the original
http://findingeliza.org
best
David
________________________________
David M. Berry
Professor of Digital Humanities
School of Media, Arts and Humanities
University of Sussex
Silverstone 316
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 8PP
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