Computer Power and Human Reason

By Joseph Weizenbaum

First edition, first impression. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1976.

Octavo, pp. xii, 300. Original dark grey cloth, lettered in silver to the spine and upper board, with silver rules above and below the title. In the original silver-and-black dust jacket, unclipped and retaining the published price of $9.95.

A near-fine copy, the binding firm, the cloth clean and the silver lettering bright, with slight rubbing to the spine ends and corners. Pictorial bookplate to the front paste-down. The contents are exceptionally clean throughout.

The original and unclipped dust jacket is very good, the panels bright and clean, with a few small spots of surface rubbing to the upper panel and wear to the edges, chiefly at the spine ends.

An important early critique of the authority entrusted to computers, written by the creator of ELIZA. Weizenbaum developed the program in the mid-1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was on the faculty and later became professor of computer science. Its DOCTOR script simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist, responding to users’ statements with questions that encouraged them to elaborate. Weizenbaum was disturbed by how readily people attributed understanding to the program: even his secretary, familiar with its workings, asked him to leave the room so that she could converse with it privately.

That unease informs this book, which combines an explanation of the sources of computational power with an examination of its ethical limits. Weizenbaum’s central concern is less whether artificial intelligence is possible than whether technical capability justifies its use. He distinguishes between decisions reached through calculation and choices requiring human judgement, arguing against the surrender of moral responsibility to machines.

The book provoked sharp responses within the artificial intelligence community. In November 1976, the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory issued Three Reviews of J. Weizenbaum’s Computer Power and Human Reason, comprising reviews by Bruce Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg and John McCarthy. McCarthy titled his contribution “An Unreasonable Book” and opened: “This moralistic and incoherent book uses computer science and technology as an illustration…” The jacket offers a contrasting assessment from Lewis Mumford, who predicted that it “will still be read half a century from now, as a landmark in the integration of scientific and humanistic thinking”.