Eliza Effect

In preface four of Douglas Hofstadter’s book of Fluid Concepts he begins with making an interesting point about certain A.I. computer programs and their lack of grasping real world concepts. Hofstadter details that if a computer program does not have a knowledge base to extract data from and construct representational models it cannot grasp the actual concept of a thing. A program can have many variables to deal with and one without a conceptual knowledge base to refer to is not affected by the change of those variable names, however a computer program with a pre determined knowledge base can exhibit a conceptual analogous attitude if it extracts existing information about a particular variable and constructs a model or conceptual sphere around that particular variable. Therefore, if a programmer changed the name of a particular variable with a reference in the knowledge base it would greatly affect the programs functions, analogies, and models dealing with that variable. Another interesting aspect Hofstadter describes is the Eliza Effect, or the susceptibility of people to infer far more understanding into a given string of words (phrase or sentence) than is warranted. Most computer programs, ones without any analogous or conceptual ability, would never make the mistake of producing the Eliza Effect, because they cannot infer deeper into an aspect. It is human nature to seek knowledge and define concepts according to relations, analogies, and personal experience. The sheer fact that we are conceptual and analogous thinkers’ pre exposes all humans to the Eliza Effect. We have a natural born desire to relate and categorize things into groups and associations, this is something computer programs do not usually do or are even designed to do. However, when building A.I. programs, which emulate human thought processes, the Eliza Effect must be considered as Hofstadter wrote. Considering this, if one was ever to make a computer program that could emulate and even reproduce the Eliza Effect for any given input or concept, then we could be one step closer to constructing a true artificial intelligence.