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October 30, 2005
Eliza
Eliza is a far cry from the United Star Ship Enterprise's intelligent computer which, of course, is purely fictional.
Eliza is obviously enacting the very word and sentence structure processes we've been discussing in class. And she shows us how much we take forgranted when it comes to our own storage, retrieval and use of langugage - our average command of language is far more dynamic and advanced than hers.
Eliza has obviously been programmed to break sentences down into components - words and phrases. She then prioritizes these, recognizes certain key words and formulates a response to them. I'm not au fait with my parts of speech and so am unsure which Eliza is recognizing although she obviously recognizes more than one sentence type with different key words and yet is flummoxed by others, showing there is a limit to her knowledge.
Both her ability to recognize and form sentences is limited and rather undynamic. It is reminiscent of the wolves who only had a set number of responses they could give when recognizing certain stimuli. Eliza cannot make truly independent decisions, this is obvious in this version of an intelligent program because her recognition programming and responses are very limited.
She is also rather amusing because her responses are also stereotypically therapist-like, showing concern but in a distanced and controlled fashion.
~ Nanette
Posted by lcissavides at October 30, 2005 01:51 PM
Comments
I liked it in your blog when you reminded us of the wolves that we discussed early in the semester. I agree with you that they use similar "communication" skills. The wolves use only 11 gestures and Eliza only recognizes some key words to respond.
To me Eliza seemed concerned and as you wrote "therapist-like". It is interesting to think that when people need someone to talk to they can get online and talk to Eliza which is "purely fictional" and feel better.
Posted by: Zaya at October 30, 2005 07:52 PM