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