Norbert Wiener
In plain wordsAn American mathematician who founded cybernetics, the study of feedback and control in animals and machines, and warned early that machines might pursue goals we did not truly intend.
American mathematician at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who founded and named cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI.. Wartime work on predicting the paths of aircraft for anti-aircraft fire led him to statistical prediction and filtering (the Wiener filter) and to feedback as a general principle of purposeful behavior, set out in 'Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine' (1948). 'The Human Use of Human Beings' (1950) examined the social consequences of automationautomation, n.: Using machines or software to do work that people would otherwise do, from factory robots to programs that sort email or write reports., including technological unemploymenttechnological unemployment, n.: Joblessness caused by machines or software taking over work that people used to be paid for, faster than new kinds of work appear for them.. In a 1960 Science article he argued that before entrusting a task to a machine we cannot readily stop, we must be sure that 'the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire', a passage now often cited as an early statement of the alignment problemalignment problem, n.: The unsolved challenge of building AI systems — especially ones smarter than us — that reliably want what we want and do what we mean, rather than something subtly or dangerously different.. He received the US National Medal of Science and, posthumously, a National Book Award for 'God & Golem, Inc.' (1964).
Related
- cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI.
- alignment problemalignment problem, n.: The unsolved challenge of building AI systems — especially ones smarter than us — that reliably want what we want and do what we mean, rather than something subtly or dangerously different.
- value alignmentvalue alignment, n.: Building AI whose goals reflect human values — what people care about and consider right — rather than one that merely follows orders or chases a narrow target.
- automationautomation, n.: Using machines or software to do work that people would otherwise do, from factory robots to programs that sort email or write reports.
- Warren McCullochWarren McCulloch, prop. n.: An American brain scientist who, with Walter Pitts, wrote the 1943 paper that first described nerve cells as simple logic units, the seed of today's artificial neural networks.
- John von NeumannJohn von Neumann, prop. n.: A Hungarian-American mathematician who shaped the design of modern computers, co-founded game theory, and is the first person known to have spoken of a coming technological 'singularity'.
Sources
- Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Technology Press / Wiley.
- Wiener, N. (1960). Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation. Science 131(3410): 1355–1358.
Mentioned in
cyberneticscybernetics, n.: The study of how animals, machines and organizations steer themselves using feedback: sensing the result of an action and correcting course. It was both a parent and an early rival of AI., Warren McCullochWarren McCulloch, prop. n.: An American brain scientist who, with Walter Pitts, wrote the 1943 paper that first described nerve cells as simple logic units, the seed of today's artificial neural networks., Oliver SelfridgeOliver Selfridge, prop. n.: A British-born American computer scientist who pioneered teaching machines to recognize patterns; his 1959 'Pandemonium' model did it through layers of simple, competing detectors., Walter PittsWalter Pitts, prop. n.: A largely self-taught American logician who, at about 20 and without a degree, co-invented with Warren McCulloch a simple logical model of a brain cell, the starting point of neural networks.