Joseph Weizenbaum in Berlin, 2005

Joseph Weizenbaum (Berlin, January 8, 1923 – March 5, 2008) was a German-American author and professor emeritus of computer science at MIT. Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. Events 871 - Battle of Ashdown - Ethelred of Wessex defeats a Danish invasion army Year 1923 ( MCMXXIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Events 363 - Roman Emperor Julian moves from Antioch with an army of 90000 to attack the Sassanid Empire, in a 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common German Americans ( German: Deutschamerikaner) are citizens of the United States of Ethnic German ancestry Computer science (or computing science) is the study and the Science of the theoretical foundations of Information and Computation and their

Born in Berlin, Germany to Jewish parents, he escaped Nazi Germany in 1935, emigrating with his family to the United States. PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers The United States of America —commonly referred to as the He started studying mathematics in 1941 in the US, but his studies were interrupted by the war, during which he served in the military. Around 1952 he worked on analog computers, and helped create a digital computer for Wayne State University. An analog computer (spelt analogue in British English is a form of Computer that uses continuous physical phenomena such as electrical mechanical Wayne State University is located in Detroit, Michigan, in the city's Midtown Cultural Center. In 1956 he worked for General Electric on ERMA, a computer system that introduced the use of the magnetically-encoded fonts imprinted on the bottom border of checks. ERMA, for Electronic Recording Machine-Accounting, was a pioneering Computer development project run at SRI under contract to Bank of America This allowed automated check processing via Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, and in 1964 took a position at MIT. Magnetic Ink Character Recognition, or MICR (pronounced my-ker or micker) a character recognition technology adopted mainly by the banking industry to

In 1962 (or 1966 according to ELIZA), he published a comparatively simple program called ELIZA, named after the ingenue in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which demonstrated natural language processing by engaging humans into a conversation resembling that with an empathic psychologist. ELIZA is a Computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed in 1966, which parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patient's ELIZA is a Computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed in 1966, which parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patient's Pygmalion (1913 is a play by George Bernard Shaw based on the Greek myth of the same name. Natural language processing ( NLP) is a subfield of Artificial intelligence and Computational linguistics. Weizenbaum modeled its conversational style after Carl Rogers, who introduced the use of open-ended questions to encourage patients to communicate more effectively with therapists. Carl Ransom Rogers ( January 8, 1902 – February 4, 1987) was an influential American Psychologist and among the founders of the The program applied pattern matching rules to the human's statements to figure out its replies. (Programs like this are now called chatterbots. A chatterbot (or chatbot is a type of conversational agent a Computer program designed to simulate an intelligent Conversation with one or more human users ) It is considered the forerunner of thinking machines. ^[1] Weizenbaum was shocked that his program was taken seriously by many users, who would open their hearts to it. He started to think philosophically about the implications of Artificial Intelligence and later became one of its leading critics. ^[2]

His influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason displays his ambivalence towards computer technology and lays out his case: while Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom. Joseph Weizenbaum 's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgment To Calculation (San Francisco W Compassion is a profound human Emotion prompted by the pain of others Wisdom is a concept of personal gaining of Knowledge, Understanding, Experience, discretion and intuitive understanding, along with a capacity This he saw as a consequence of their not having been raised in the emotional environment of a human family.

Weizenbaum was the creator of the SLIP programming language. SLIP is a list processing Computer programming language, invented by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s

In 1996, Weizenbaum moved to Berlin and lived in the vicinity of where he used to live with his parents. ^[3][4]

A German documentary film on Weizenbaum was released in 2007 and later dubbed in English. ^[5]

Until his death he was Chairman of the Scientific Council at the Institute of Electronic Business in Berlin. In addition to working at MIT, Weizenbaum held academic appointments at Harvard, Stanford and the University of Bremen, and other universities. Weizenbaum was reportedly buried at the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin. A public memorial was scheduled in Berlin March 18, 2008.

Works

• "ELIZA - A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine," Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9 (1966): 36-45.
• Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment To Calculation, San Francisco: W. Joseph Weizenbaum 's influential 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason From Judgment To Calculation (San Francisco W H. Freeman, 1976 ISBN 0-7167-0464-1

References

External links

• Joseph Weizenbaum: 1988 Winner of CPSR's Norbert Wiener Award for Professional and Social Responsibility
• A Java applet faithfully recreating the original ELIZA
• Institute of Electronic Business
• Interview in which Joseph Weizenbaum discusses Eliza (German-language audio with English transcription)
• Documentary film with and about Joseph Weizenbaum ( "WEIZENBAUM. Rebel at Work. " )

• Obituary, The Independent, 18 March 2008
• Obituary, The Times, 24 March 2008