2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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ELIZA effect
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/@li:z@ @fekt/ , n. [AI community] The tendency of humans to attach
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associations to terms from prior experience. For example, there is nothing
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magic about the symbol + that makes it well-suited to indicate addition;
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it's just that people associate it with addition. Using + or plus to mean
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addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.
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This term comes from the famous ELIZA program by Joseph Weizenbaum, which
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simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist by rephrasing many of the patient's
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statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It worked by simple
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pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It
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was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people
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becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due
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to people's tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never
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put there. The ELIZA effect is a Good Thing when writing a programming
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language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an
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Artificial Intelligence system. Compare ad-hockery ; see also AI-complete.
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Sources for a clone of the original Eliza are available at
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ftp://ftp.cc.utexas.edu/pub/AI_ATTIC/Programs/Classic/Eliza/Eliza.c.
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