Eliza, the Rogerian Therapist (1999)

http://psych.fullerton.edu/mbirnbaum/psych101/Eliza.htm

by jrhouston • 6 years ago

18 12 6 years ago

psych.fullerton.edu

dang• 6 years ago

So many great Eliza submissions in the past:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

But not really any fundamental discussions, probably because it was already so well known as a thing.

tim333• 6 years ago

I've got one for my 404 page. Quite fun.

AaronLasseigne• 6 years ago

For anyone interested in learning more I recommend the 99% Invisible episode on it: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-eliza-effect/

wombatmobile2• 6 years ago

Eliza was great value for as long as you could stay within its limitations. Eliza was a true friend.

Imagine Eliza GPT 2020, speech enabled friend in pocket.

Who's going to implement it?

kristopolous4• 6 years ago

Go read ELIZA's author, Joseph Weizenbaum's book, "Computer and Human Reason"; well at least the first 2 chapters. Let me justify it, (I'm typing it out from a hard copy so excuse my brevity)

Page 4:

"DOCTOR...soon became famous...mainly because it was an easy program to demonstrate. Most other programs could not vividly demonstrate the information-processing power of a computer to visitors who did not already have some specialized knowledge"

As in, the mid-1960s, this was (one of) the first non-technical computer programs. No commands, no manual, no conceptual overview needed - just sit down and start typing.

Page 6:

"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 accusations 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 ... what I had not realized is that extremely short exposure to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."

Page 38:

"Like highways and automobiles, they [new forms of media] enable the society to articulate entirely new forms of social action, but at the same time they irreversibly disable formerly available modes of social behavior."

... that's a pretty deep insight about social media, especially from 1976.

Pages 115-130 he writes quite critically of "hacker culture", characterizing the participants as "compulsive programmers" and comparing them to gamblers. I'm not making any judgment on his claims in those pages, but his arguments are fairly unique and I had not seen them before.

tantalor2• 6 years ago

The bit about "delusional thinking" is incredibly condescending.

kristopolous4• 6 years ago

Although you can certainly read it that way, I don't think that was his intention. From the broader context, I believe he was trying to use it clinically and not as a derisive insult. He was trying to understand the mechanisms which made people have emotional connections with a computer program.

"Maybe it's because people saw it as a tool and people become emotionally attached to tools" you may think. Coincidentally his chapter following that is entitled "On Tools" where he goes into psychological literature on human-tool interaction.

---

Also there's an unspoken context here that he gets a step away from a few times without hitting it:

Non-technical people understood computers from their popular depictions; perfect electronic brains; profoundly superior-to-human machines.

Some people likely assumed there was an infallibility to the interaction, as if someone, say unfamiliar with stage magic, saw a magic trick and assumed it was sorcery. People employ whatever mental model they're familiar with that fits best.

The idea it was merely just rearranging your words and feeding it back at you likely seemed just outrageously galling to be the thing a multi-million dollar machine that takes up an entire room and coming from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab is doing. No. It must be real...

Almost as outrageous as someone suggesting your sorcerer simply put the item in his pocket while he was distracting you.

Eliza, in 1965 was a computer version of Uri Geller.

---

Another idea relating to Milgram, he never pointed out whether people trusted that a machine would have had safety precautions built in. Of all his variations I'm not familiar with any where he made the machine "malfunction".

Would subjects then trust the proctor but distrust the machine and back off more or perhaps, even more interesting, would there be no difference at all?

btrask• 6 years ago

If someone made a version of Eliza for victim culture, "the bit about [message subject] is incredibly condescending" could be one of its stock phrases.

Eliza, the Rogerian Therapist (1999)

Related Stories