Joesph WeizenbaumDied 5 Mar 2008 at age 85 (born 8 Jan 1923). German engineer and computer scientist who is remembered for devising the computer program known as Eliza, which could mimic human conversation, in written communication, giving the user responses resembling an empathetic psychologist. It was named after the character in the play My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle. While a boy, he emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1930s with his parents who were fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany. His career in computing led in 1955 to joining the team at General Electric that created the first computer system designed for banking applications. By 1976, in his book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, he was questioning what limits should be adopted in the implentation of artificial intelligence in computers.« |
