Why the creator of the first chatbot turned against AI
This podcast episode looks back at Joseph Weizenbaum, the computer scientist who created the very first chatbot but later became a fierce critic of artificial intelligence. It explores why he firmly believed that computers should never be confused with humans.
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The Guardian's long-read podcast revisits a 2023 piece by Ben Tarnoff about Joseph Weizenbaum, a pioneer who witnessed the birth of AI. Despite building ELIZA, an early program that simulated human conversation, Weizenbaum grew deeply alarmed by how people projected human emotions onto machines. He argued that there are fundamental aspects of human thought and feeling that computers can never replicate, warning society against blindly trusting technology over human empathy and judgment.
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