From judgment to calculation: the phenomenology of embodied skill Celebrating memories of Hubert Dreyfus and Joseph Weizenbaum

摘要

In celebrating the memories of our two founding advisory board members, Hubert Dreyfus and Joseph Weizenbaum, we celebrate their contributions to the vision of AI&Society—a humanistic vision of the interplay of art, science, technology and society, an alternative to the techno-centric and deterministic narrative of artificial intelligence. During my visit to MIT in 1985, Joseph Weizenbaum not only inspired me to launch an AI journal on the theme of knowledge and society, his seminal book, Computer Power and Human Reason, especially his concern of the turn from of judgment to calculation, became and remains one of the central driving force of the Journal. Weizenbaum's interest in AI&Society was much more than mere academic curiosity; he proactively introduced the idea of the journal to the AI community in the USA, including Hubert Dreyfus, Terry Winograd and David Noble. What remains a fond memory for me is Joseph Weizenbaum walking with me to the MIT Media Lab, introducing me to Marvin Minsky who in turn introduced me to his research team including Seymour Pap-pert who also became a member of the Advisory Board the journal in the early days. Although many of the Journal Board members were conversant with Hubert Dreyfus' critique of artificial intelligence in his seminal book, 'What Computers Can't, he makes his first personal contribution to AI&Society debate on the limits of cognitivist view of mind in his talk "Is Socrates to Blame For Cognitivism?" at the International Conference on Language, Culture and Artificial Intelligence, held in Stockholm in 1988. This was followed by the publication of his paper on "The Socratic and Platonic Basis of Cognitivism" in AI&Society (1988). Through his association with AI&Society, Hubert not only contributed to shaping the debates on Expert Systems in the 1980s, but he also inspired many authors to contribute articles to AI&Society to reflect on the ongoing AI debates whether they be on the Internet, neural networks, robotics, body or Jazz. The 1980s was also an era of academic soul searching in response to the political narrative in the UK on the lines that 'there is no such thing as society, only individuals'. Reflecting back upon this narrative of 34 years ago, the launch of 'AI For Society' conferences (Gill 1986) and the foundation of the 'AI&Society' journal were seen as the most appropriate academic response at that spur of the moment. It was also a time when some of the Journal founding editors, David Smith was leading research into IT and Education (ESRC), Richard Ennals (Imperial College, London) was managing the British Fifth Generation Programme, Alvey, Mike Cooley (1987) was directing the radical socially useful technology networks at the Greater London Enterprise Board (GLEB), Bo Corazon (Stockholm) was leading the European research network on Language, Culture and Artificial Project, Massimo Negrotti was leading an intellectually stimulating research into 'Culture of the Artificial' at Urbino, and Satinder Gill at Cambridge was making the tacit dimension of knowledge a core driving concept of AI&Society. Our editors of 1990s, Victoria Vesna (UCLA), Sha Xin Wei (Arizona) and Larry Stapleton (WIT) keep alive the humanistic spirit of research envisioned by Dreyfus and Weizenbaum. Whilst to many in the AI community, Hubert is remembered as an established author, an engaged teacher, an admired colleague, a creative collaborator, a committed friend, and a charming storyteller, he together with Weizenbaum remain inspirational guides and resource to many of our authors and readers, as illustrated by the tributes to them by our authors in this volume.