[AI community]
n. The tendency of
humans to attach associations to terms from prior experience.
For example, there is nothing magic about the symbol '+' that
makes it well-suited to indicate addition; it's just that people
associate it with addition. Using '+' or 'plus' to mean addition
in a computer language is taking advantage of the ELIZA effect.
This term comes from the famous ELIZA program, which simulated a
Rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the patient's
statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It worked
by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into
canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many
anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in
dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people's tendency to
attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. The
ELIZA effect is a Good Thing when writing a programming
language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when
analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.
Compare ad-hockery; see also AI-complete.
