Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation
is a Book by Joseph Weizenbaum
It chiefly talks about ELIZA among other things of course!
So you know the popular coloumn agony ‘aunt’ right!? Well, though this was made for some other reasons, it soon became the first agony ‘AI Aunt’!
Historically ELIZA was created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the mid-1960s and is considered the first chatbot!
It was new in that it was simulating a psychotherapist!
If you actually think then you would realise that a psychotherapist is actually just the person who ‘listens’ to you! He or she may not have answers to your life problems! He or she simply make you aware of what you already know!
Many psychotherapist would actually just repeat your own words and add some phrases and use them for ‘therapy’!
The bot did the same and how!
ELIZA’s most famous implementation was the “DOCTOR” script, which simulated a Rogerian psychotherapist!
It functioned by mirroring the user’s statements back to them as questions (e.g., if a user said “My head hurts,” ELIZA might ask “Why do you say your head hurts?”).
Instead of “understanding” language, ELIZA used pattern matching and substitution. It identified keywords in user input and applied transformation rules to generate a response.
All said and done it worked! But it too well!
So much that you got a phenomenon called the “ELIZA Effect”
Weizenbaum was surprised to find that users often attributed deep understanding and human-like emotions to the program, despite its simple logic!
This phenomenon, where people anthropomorphize computer programs, became known as the ELIZA Effect!
Disturbed by how easily people were “deceived” by the software, Weizenbaum became a vocal critic of artificial intelligence. He argued in his book that computers should never be given tasks requiring human wisdom or empathy!
The sad thing here though is that humans need an AI to ‘listen’ to them!
Of course no AI or for that matter those with narrow mind can ever appreciate melodious music and songs!
Like the famous Dal dal par sone ki chidiya by Rafi ji!
Listen to some soft Rafi and sleep!
Shub ratri…
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