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From: PHayes@SRI-KL.ARPA (cas)
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: moral responsibility
Message-ID: <8611050749.AA24116@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: Mon, 3-Nov-86 13:59:37 EST
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Posted: Mon Nov  3 13:59:37 1986
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The idea of banning vision research ( or any other, for that matter ) is
even sillier and more dangerous than Bill Trost points out.  The analogy
is not to ban automatic transmissions, but THINKING about automatic
transmissions.  And banning thinking about anything is about as dangerous
as any course of action can be, no matter how highminded or sincerely morally
concerned those who call for it.  
To be fair to Weizenbaum, he does have a certain weird consistency.  He tells
me, for example, that in his view helicopters are intrinsically evil ( as
the Vietnam war has shown ).  One can see how the logic works: if an artifact
is ( or can be ) used to do more bad than good, then it is evil, and research
on evil things is immoral.  
While this is probably not the place to start a debate in theoretical ethics, 
I do think that this view, while superficially attractive, simply doesnt stand
up to a little thought, and can be used to label as wicked anything which one
dislikes for any reason at all.  Weizenbaum has made a successful career by
systematically attacking AI research on the grounds that it is somehow
immoral, and finding a large and willing audience.  He doesnt make me squirm.
Pat Hayes
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