Claim and evidence Close ×
Wiener’s article in Science (6 May 1960) says that the assumption that machines cannot possess any degree of originality, often stated as ‘nothing can come out of the machine which has not been put into it’, should be rejected in its entirety, and states his thesis that machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of their designers. Copy claim link
Copy claim reference
Machine-checked Stated in source Supported
Supporting evidence: primary · 1 source; Context: primary · 1 source
Date 1960-05-06 · publication Records dated 1960 → Role Contesting Register (kind of text) Nonfiction Engagement Engages a premise. Argues from game-playing machines that learn, and from machines acting faster than their operators can follow, that a machine’s performance can outrun what its designers comprehend. Scope and limits Wiener contests the assumption in order to argue that machines may be “both effective and dangerous”; that argument is recorded on B6 in the dataset. Samuel’s reply of September 1960 is not recorded: only its indexed abstract could be read.
The evidence 02 primary source Context only
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗ Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) · 1960-05-06
Archived copy, captured 2024-12-22: Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗
Copy source reference
Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
Copy APA
Download BibTeX Download RIS Download CSL-JSON
Source excerpt “This is the assumption that machines cannot possess any degree of originality. This frequently takes the form of a statement that nothing can come out of the machine which has not been put into it.” Location in source p. 1355, left column, paragraph beginning 'Before commencing'
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Norbert Wiener Version Scan of the original Science pages in a later JSTOR download, hosted on a Pennsylvania State University course page; text layer read and pp. 1357–1358 compared with the rendered pages by the pre-1996 candidate search. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2024-12-22: Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗ . Captured 23606 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2024-12-22. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution Norbert Wiener, "Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation", Science 131 (1960), 1355–1358. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted; the inspected copy is a university course file.. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). Read on the page image for the candidate pack; it could not be matched mechanically. The PDF’s text layer interleaves the three columns; quotations read from the page image of p. 1355 (pdftoppm at 160 dpi) on 2026-11-02. The preceding sentence says the attitude ‘should be rejected in its entirety’. No human editorial review. primary source Supports the claim
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗ Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) · 1960-05-06
Archived copy, captured 2024-12-22: Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗
Copy source reference
Cite the original source Cite the original document, not Selekoa. Check these details against it.
Copy APA
Download BibTeX Download RIS Download CSL-JSON
Source excerpt “It is my thesis that machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of their designers, and that in doing so they may be both effective and dangerous.” Location in source p. 1355, middle column
How it was read Retrieved directly from the publisher
Machine-checked · 2026-11-04
Source details and check notes Authors Norbert Wiener Version Scan of the original Science pages in a later JSTOR download, hosted on a Pennsylvania State University course page; text layer read and pp. 1357–1358 compared with the rendered pages by the pre-1996 candidate search. Canonical address Open the canonical source ↗ Accessed 2026-10-06 Language English (en) Archive copy Open archived copy, captured 2024-12-22: Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation ↗ . Captured 23606 days after the recorded publication date. An archive copy shows only what the archive retrieved on 2024-12-22. It does not prove what the page said earlier, and it can differ from the copy checked on 2026-10-06.Attribution Norbert Wiener, "Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation", Science 131 (1960), 1355–1358. Reuse No open redistribution licence asserted; the inspected copy is a university course file.. Bibliographic metadata, editorial paraphrases and short attributed quotations (at most 50 words each). Recheck terms before wider redistribution. Check notes Candidate pack passage, antecedent texts (research/prehistory). Read on the page image for the candidate pack; it could not be matched mechanically. The PDF’s text layer interleaves the three columns; quotations read from the page image of p. 1355 (pdftoppm at 160 dpi) on 2026-11-02. No human editorial review. Status and meaning Editorial status. Machine-checked . Machines found this record and checked it against its sources; no person accepted it individually. Each evidence record above shows how it was checked.
Relation. A passage of the document disputes the proposition or a premise it depends on. The record documents the text’s position, not who is right.
Date. Date printed on the Science pages.
Record ID pre-u01-wiener-1960-contests