The Eliza Effect

The Preface for chapter 4 in Hofstadter’s book deals with the anthropomorphizing of computer programs that deal in some way with artificial intelligence. Although I had up until this point never heard of the Eliza Effect, it appears to imply that human tendency is to give human though characteristics and the ability for computers to take real world information (with knowing nothing of the real world) and for the purpose of creation. Anthropomorphism on the other hand is within the same conceptual sphere as the Eliza Effect, but includes giving human qualities and characteristics to things that are not human including machines.

Besides the ideas that Hofstadter explained in the preface, I feel that for in the realm of artificial intelligence, for a computer or a machine to really be able to think, to be able to create a work of fiction, or to create analogies and metaphors, like the examples that Hofstadter spoke of two very important concepts have to be made real for computers. First computers or machines have to have the ability to learn, not just have the ability to store and recall information that is supplied by its creator, programmer, or user, but to be able to learn from and extract further information from the data that it is supplied with. Lastly I think that a computer has to be self aware, if a computer can become aware, that it is has to know what something is for what it is not just a string of zeros and ones that represents a real idea, concept, or physical object. It has to be able to distinguish between what is abstract and what is physical.