Steve Talbott

As information technology becomes ever more sophisticated reflections of our own intelligence, it seems fair to say that our thoughts and assumptions get built into them in increasingly powerful ways. Their whole purpose, after all, is to embody our own contrivings. If we would not want the contents of a book to act on us without our full awareness of the intent and import of the author's recorded thoughts, neither should we want the much more aggressive contents of a computer to act on us without full awareness of the intentions the programmer has invested in the device.