For the 75th anniversary, a new edition of The Human Use of Human Beings—the landmark book that delves into the relationship between humans and computers, and presciently anticipates many contemporary dilemmas surrounding AI technology. With a new introduction by Brian Christian, author of the bestselling Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem. In 1950, mathematician-philosopher Norbert Wiener ended this classic book on the place of machines in society with a warning: “We shall never receive the right answers to our questions unless we ask the right questions....
The hour is very late, and the choice of good and evil knocks at our door.”Wiener, the founder of the science of cybernetics—the study of the relationship between computers and the human nervous system—was widely mislabeled as an advocate for the automation of human life. As The Human Use for Human Beings reveals, his vision was much more complex and interesting, and is more relevant in today’s world of AI than anyone could have anticipated. In his new introduction, Brian Christian aptly calls Wiener the “progenitor of contemporary AI-safety discourse.” Wiener hoped that machines would release people from relentless and repetitive drudgery to achieve more creative pursuits, yet he anticipated the danger of dehumanizing and displacement. His pioneering views on the human-machine relationship as a “communicative process” are only more crucial now, as we carry in our pockets AI devices that we can literally speak to.
His prescient warnings illuminate our contemporary relationships with language, art, and even social media. The Human Use of Human Beings examines the implications of cybernetics for education, law, language, science, technology, as Wiener anticipates the enormous impact—in effect, a third industrial revolution—that the computer has had on our lives.
The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society的创作者
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Norbert Wiener received his Ph.D. from Harvard at the age of eighteen and joined the mathematics department at M.I.T. when he was twenty-five. Honored throughout his life with numerous scientific awards, he was th...
Norbert Wiener received his Ph.D. from Harvard at the age of eighteen and joined the mathematics department at M.I.T. when he was twenty-five. Honored throughout his life with numerous scientific awards, he was the author of two autobiographies, Ex-Prodogy and I Am a Mathematician, as well as several important books and basic papers on the theory and practice of cybernetics.
Brian Christian is the bestselling author of the acclaimed books The Most Human Human, Algorithms to Live By, and The Alignment Problem, which have been translated into nineteen languages. A researcher at the University of Oxford, he lives in San Francisco.
P. 杜巴勒吁请科学家注意世界上的军事和政治方面的日益增长的机械化，其情况就跟一部巨大的按照控制论原理进行工作的超人般的机器一样。为了避免这种机械化所带来的多方面的（外在的和内在的）危险，他之强调需要人类学家和哲学家是十分正确的。换句话说，作为科学家，我们一定要知道人的本性是什么，甚至当我们一定得去使用像军人或政治家之类的知识时，我们也得做到这一点；我们一定得知道为什么我们要去控制人。 (查看原文)
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