From: axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Colbys-Weizenbaum and Overcoming Depression 2.0
Date: 13 Jan 93 01:11:13 GMT
Organization: School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK

mstede@cs.toronto.edu (Manfred Stede) writes:

> Date: 11 Jan 93 16:03:59 GMT
> Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
>
> plummer@cs.swarthmore.edu (David Barker-Plummer) writes:
>
> >>>>>> On 11 Jan 93 01:23:18 GMT, axs@cs.bham.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman) said:
>
> >AS> In the mean time we are talking only about "interactive"
> >AS> documents, so why make a fuss about them?
>
> >I agree with almost everything in your post, neatly summarized by this
> >paragraph,
>
> I don't agree at all;  a person suffering from depression is looking
> neither for an intelligent book explaining that "all this is merely
> a temporary malfunctioning of your neurotransmitters" or whatever,
> nor for a computer program doing the same thing in question-answer mode.
> What the person is looking for instead is some emotional support --
> which I'm not going to "define", but it's very different from the
> aforementioned two things.

Well sometimes people get emotional support from reading books (e.g.
books of poetry, the bible, etc.) or listening to music. Sometimes
they get emotional support from being given FACTS: lots of extremely
anxious parents have been comforted by reading Benjamin Spock's
book on baby and child care, e.g. by being told that a particular
symptom is very common and does not imply that the baby is seriously
ill. (Of course if the information given is incorrect then that is
bad.)

People get comfort in all sorts of ways, and it's just arrogant to
object to some ways that are helpful to others just because they
would not work for you.

Of course IF a person gets comfort because they WRONGLY believe the
machine has a real personality, is speaking from real personal
experience, etc. then they have been deceived, just as they might
have been deceived had they thought the author of a book was
speaking with authority, from real personal experience, etc.

If the deceit was intentionally produced by others, then that is
fraudulent and normal legal sanctions should apply. If the deceit
arises simply because of the ignorance of the individuals who are
deceived then that's a flaw in their education which should be
remedied by better general education about the current state of AI
and expert systems.

> On the contrary: The book all the time says "hey, I'm just a book,
> written two years ago by someone you don't know".  That Colby-program,
> on the other hand, _pretends_ to be "someone" by using the first
> person singular pronoun.  Cf. Weizenbaum's older writings on people
> treating computers as personae.

If you are taken in by computer programs, then you need to attend
courses on the current state of the art.

If you are not taken in, then why are you so arrogant as to think
other people will be?

Of course, as I said in my original posting on this topic, at some
stage in the future there could well be machines that are far more
like real individuals with their own sources of motivation, their
own personal histories and their own opinions. Some of them will be
good psychotherapists and some will be bad ones, just like people.

Aaron
-- 
Aaron Sloman,
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy