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N.Y. Times Magazine Chats With ALICE Bot Creator
aridg writes: "This week's New York Times Magazine has an article about Richard Wallace, the programmer of the ALICE AI chatbot that won first place in several competitions for realistic human-like conversation. Wallace sounds like a pretty unusual and interesting fellow; the article quotes an NYU prof both praising ALICE and saying to Wallace: '... I actively dislike you. I think you are a paranoid psycho.' A good read. [Usual NY Times registration disclaimers apply.]"
...not his fault.
Then what would you call it? Whose fault is it? It's a clearly detrimental trait, and thus a fault, and it's obviously his...
Of course that's not what you mean. The idiom stands in for "not due to a fault of his." But how can it not be?
Most scientists would agree that all behavioral traits are a product of genetics and environment. If you use the excuse of genetics or environment for this one person and this one pattern of behavior, why not for all people, for all behaviors?
A mental illness is right at the heart of what makes up a person. It's just a bad personality trait taken to an extreme. We all know people who are a little paranoid, a little moody, or somewhat impulsive. Just because someone draws an arbitrary line and says, "This is the point at which the trait becomes an illness, which he is clearly past." is hardly a convincing reason to suddenly consider him blameless.
So by what reasoning should he not be held to account for his behavior, while another person who can function in society should?
That said, I find many of his attitudes quite reasonable. Dishonesty is the norm in human interaction. It's disgusting and frustrating. Furthermore, people include many utter irrelevancies in their decision making process. Every popular person is, to some degree, a manipulator, and most are capable of impressive self-deception. People make meaningless chatter at each other while they convey the true message with their bodies and tiniest nuances of voice. It's horribly complicated and arbitrary, and largely subconscious and automatic; a matter of instinct. Minds that reject superficiality and examine everything through conscious thought inevitably find hypocracy, and either learn to tolerate internal contradiction or suffer endlessly. I'm sure he would be quite perfectly functional in a society made up of people more like himself.
Whether that society would be better off in general is something I rather doubt. People, even geniuses, are too stupid to live by conscious decisions alone. Ancient, instinctive prejudices tend to keep our misunderstandings from being complete disasters, however absurd they seem under conscious examination.
He is what he is. We are each responsible for what we are and what we do, regardless of how helpless others consider us to change.