(From
ELIZA) 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.
The ELIZA effect is a Good Thing when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when
analysing an Artificial Intelligence system.
Compare ad-hockery?
See also: AI-complete, Turing Test
This article (or an earlier version of it) contains material from FOLDOC's [article on the ELIZA effect], used with permission.
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