Word: human
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fear of intellectual inadequacy, of powerlessness before the tireless electronic wizards, has given rise to dozens of science-fiction fantasies of computer takeovers. In The Tale of the Big Computer, by Swedish Physicist Hannes Alfven, written under the pen name Olof Johannesson, the human beings of today become the horses of tomorrow. The world runs not for man but for the existence and welfare of computers...
Some of the most informed apprehensions about computers are expressed by Professor Joseph Weizenbaum of M.I.T.'s Laboratory for Computer Science. Human dependence on computers, Weizenbaum argues, has already become irreversible, and in that dependence resides a frightening vulnerability. It is not just that the systems might break down; the remedy for that could eventually be provided by a number of back-up systems. Besides, industrialized man is already vulnerable to serious dislocations by breakdowns?when the electrical power of New York City goes out, for example. Perhaps a greater danger, says Weizenbaum, lies in the fact that "a computer...
Some social critics are worried that a democratization of computers, making them as common as television sets are today, may eventually cause human intellectual powers to atrophy. Even now, students equipped with pocket calculators have been relieved of having to do their figuring on paper; will they eventually forget how to do it, just as urban man has lost so many crafts of survival? Possibly. But the steam engine did not destroy men's muscles, and the typewriter has not ruined the ability to write longhand...
...going for it except a prodigious memory and some good math skills, but today the best models can be wired up to learn by experience, follow an argument, ask pertinent questions and write pleasing poetry and music. They can also carry on somewhat distracted conversations so convincingly that their human partners do not know they are talking to a machine...
...will to win by forcing the computers to try harder -and to think out more moves in advance-when they were losing. Then the computers learned very quickly. One of them beat Samuel and went on to defeat a champion player who had not lost a game to a human opponent in eight years...