ELIZA effect

Using '+' or 'plus' to mean addition in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.

In the introduction, Hofstadter warns about the Eliza effect that lead people to attribute understanding to a computer program that only uses a few stock phrases.

Preface 4: The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers.

The ELIZA effect, in computer science, is the tendency to unconsciously assume computer behaviors are analogous to human behaviors.

The discovery of the ELIZA effect was an important development in artificial intelligence, demonstrating the principle of using social engineering rather than explicit programming to pass a Turing test.

According to this argument, a human's judgment of a Turing test is vulnerable to the ELIZA effect, a tendency to mistake superficial signs of intelligence for the real thing, anthropomorphizing the program.

In both its specific and general forms, the ELIZA effect is notable for occurring even when users of the system are aware of the determinate nature of output produced by the system.

From a psychological standpoint, the ELIZA effect is the result of a subtle cognitive dissonance between the user's awareness of programming limitations and their behavior towards the output of the program.

Although some of the prose generated by the program are quite impressive, due in part to the Eliza effect, the computer does not have any notion of plot or of the meaning of the words it uses.

Wardrip-Fruin attempts to explain expressive processing through the ELIZA effect, The Tale-Spin Effect, The SimCity Effect, and many other elements of interactive digital media.

In its specific form, the ELIZA effect refers only to "the susceptibility of people to read far more understanding than is warranted into strings of symbols - especially words - strung together by computers".

Turkle, S., Eliza Effect: tendency to accept computer responses as more intelligent than they really are (from Life on the screen- Identity in the Age of the Internet, Phoenix Paperback: London, 1997)

A trivial example of the specific form of the Eliza effect, given by Douglas Hofstadter, involves an automated teller machine which displays the words "THANK YOU" at the end of a transaction.

More generally, the ELIZA effect describes any situation where, based solely on a system's output, users perceive computer systems as having "intrinsic qualities and abilities which the software controlling the (output) cannot possibly achieve" or "assume that [outputs] reflect a greater causality than they actually do."

It is the reverse of the ELIZA effect, which Sherry Turkle states is "our more general tendency to treat responsive computer programmes as more intelligent than they really are" and the cause to "very small amounts of interactivity", causing humans to "project own complexity onto the undeserving object".