What about helping disabled people use computers? Or environments that aren't conducive to using your hands like a factory? ...If the only use you can think of for software like this is "creepy," maybe it is not the technology that is creepy.
> If the only use you can think of for software like this is "creepy," maybe it is not the technology that is creepy.
Really?
I couldn't find what I was actually looking for, where Weizenbaum describes how vision or reasoning experiments might be made with benign or even cute objects, but for rather not so benign ends. I found this instead, which I think is even better put.
> Other people say, and I think this is a widely used rationalization, that fundamentally the tools we work on are "mere" tools; This means that whether they get use for good or evil depends on the person who ultimately buys them and so on.
> There's nothing bad about working in computer vision, for example. Computer vision may very well some day be used to heal people who would otherwise die. Of course, it could also be used to guide missiles, cruise missiles for example, to their destination, and all that. You see, tthe technology itself is neutral and value-free and it just depends how one uses it. And besides -- consistent with that -- we can't know, we scientists cannot know how it is going to be used. So therefore we have no responsibility.
> Well, that is false. It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know.
> But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live.
> If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used.
So... When you think about computers and lasers today, is it a military application that comes to your mind? Even rocketry is iffy.
I read the GP completely agreeing with your point, but this comment is such a clear reminder that we have no hope of knowing what change will come from a technology that I had to change my mind.
There is no single application that comes to my mind, so I can answer neither yes or no, and I can't deduce what answer you seem to be supposing.
> I read the GP completely agreeing with your point, but this comment is such a clear reminder that we have no hope of knowing what change will come from a technology that I had to change my mind.
Okay, but why? Because a military application doesn't come or come to my mind when I "think about computers and lasers"? I'm not following.
Because this is an excerpt from a smart person just a bit out of touch with his times (it would be a majoritarian opinion among smart people a few years earlier) claiming that computers are inherently linked to the military, to the point that new CS undergrads would certainly work in military projects after graduation.
there is already sophisticated eye tracking equipment more suitable for military purpose. Might be useful for spying, but not more useful than key logging or screen capture.
