Norbert Wiener Quotes

“Again and again I have heard the statement that learning machines cannot subject us to any new dangers, because we can turn them off when we feel like it. But can we? To turn a machine off effectively, we must be in possession of information as to whether the danger point has come. The mere fact that we have made the machine does not guarantee that we shall have the proper information to do this. This is already implicit in the statement that the checker-playing machine can defeat the man who has programmed it, and this after a very limited time of working in.”

“Can man-made machines learn and can they reproduce themselves?”

“Information is information, not matter or energy.”

“Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.”

“There is much which we must leave, whether we like it or not, to the un-'scientific' narrative method of the professional historian.”

“There is nothing more dangerous to contemplate than World War III.”