Published in 1976 and subtitled From Judgment to Calculation, this book is one of the first and most searching critiques of artificial intelligence written by an insider. Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT, had built ELIZA in the mid-1960s, a simple program that mimicked a psychotherapist by reflecting users' statements back to them as questions. He was shaken by how people responded: users confided in it, attributed understanding and empathy to it, and some psychiatrists proposed that programs like it could deliver therapy at scale. The book is his attempt to understand that reaction and to draw a moral line. Weizenbaum explains, accessibly, what computers actually do, and he argues that the real danger is not that machines will become human but that humans will come to see themselves as machines, reducing judgment, wisdom, and care to calculation. His central distinction is between deciding, which a computer can do by following procedures, and choosing, which requires human values, experience, and responsibility. Even if computers could perform certain tasks, he insists, there are tasks they ought not be given, such as those requiring respect, understanding, and love. He also sketches a sharp portrait of the "compulsive programmer" and criticizes the technological instrumentalism of his own field and its ties to military funding. Dismissed by many AI researchers at the time, the book has come to seem remarkably prescient in an era of chatbots, AI companions, and automated decision-making, and it remains a foundational text for anyone thinking about technology, ethics, and what is distinctively human.