Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
ELIZA:
Tell me more about your family.
Young woman: My mother takes care of me.
ELIZA:
Who else in your family takes care of you?
Young woman: My father.
ELIZA:
Your father.
Young woman: You are like my father in some ways.
ELIZA:
What resemblance do you see?
Young woman: You are not very aggressive but I think you
don't want me to notice that.
ELIZA:
What makes you think I am not very aggres-
sive?
Young woman: You don't argue with me.
ELIZA:
Why do you think I don't argue with you?
Young woman: You are afraid of me.
ELIZA: Does it please you to believe I am afraid of
you?
Andsoon...[1]
Weizenbaum soon discovered that people in his laboratory were treating
the program with human-like respect.
I was startled to see how quickly and how very deeply people con-
versing with it became emotionally involved with the computer and
how unequivocally they anthropomorphized it. Once my secretary,
who had watched me work on the program for many months and
therefore surely knew it to be merely a computer program, starting
conversing with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked
me to leave the room. Another time, I suggested I might rig the
system so that I could examine all conversations anyone had had
with it, say, overnight. I was promptly bombarded with accusa-
tions that what I proposed amounted to spying on people's most
intimate thoughts; clear evidence that people were conversing with
the computer as if it were a person who could be appropriately and
usefully addressed in intimate terms. [1]
