Stephen Downes

This article was written in 1970, when the author, Joseph Weizenbaum (the inventor of ELIZA) was 47 years old. Having escaped Germany before the war, he understood from experience the argument that there should be moral constraints on science, and the first part of this article puts it eloquently into text. People can and quite rightly should debate the ethics of science, because science is not removed from the rest of society. But on what basis? Here the argument is weaker. Weizenbaum offers two criteria: we should reject things "whose very contemplation ought to give rise to feelings of disgust in every civilized person" such as "the proposal that an animal's visual system and brain be coupled to computers"; and we should reject things "that which can easily be seen to have irreversible and not entirely foreseeable side effects," such as "automatic recognition of human speech." But he also says, "I am, of course, aware of the fact that these judgments of mine have themselves no moral force except on myself," and calls for people, and especially educators, "to be a whole person... (with) the courage to confront one's inner as well as one's outer world."