Week 11 - Weizenbaum & Brooks - 2ESDAYS

The first thing we noted was the interesting contrast between Weizenbaum’s article and Brook’s essay. Brook’s debunking of AI fears is centered on popular fears that relate to the AI and computers in and of themselves. Weizenbaum’s uneasiness, on the other hand, does not relate to AI in and of itself but to human behavior and beliefs around it. Because of this, Weizenbaum’s article piqued our interest the most. We discussed his description of the mechanistic view of humans and agree that people have been seduced by logic and reason. In positing science as the only source of truth, we have come to ignore many other sources of enlightenment, other cultural truths, and the great many components of human life that fall outside the realm of the logical. We found Weizenbaum’s antipositivist point of view particularly fascinating considering his education in computer science, a domain that rests on positivism.

Weizenbaum states that arts used to be considered a source of enlightenment on par with sciences, and that they have become seen as only entertainment. Drawing on theoretical knowledge from other classes, we connected this excision of the arts to the excision of the senses from Western life and thought. We also theorized that arts have been rejected from knowledge making because they are not quantifiable and too sensorial in a world that reifies detached, rational thought.

Finally, we discussed Weizenbaum’s argument that in mechanising the human, we have reduced all conflicts to errors of communication. We discussed the impossibility of communication in cases like the rise of the alt-right, who have closed themselves off to communication: the claim that they would realise the errors of their ways if we only talked to them is futile, because they have already decided to ignore outside opinions. We pondered on the power of language in radicalization and in more mundane situation, like the fears of AI that are fueled in part by the use of suitcase words which mislead people as to the capacities of AI.