Preface 4

I found the discussion about the Eliza effect to be interesting. I think that we fall for this illusion more than we even know. We tend to give computers too much credit for the tasks that they accomplish. I believe that this stems from the fact that we sometimes think of computers as "thinking things", instead of just devices that follow commands that are given to them. One example of this illusion is with the 20 questions computer game. In this game the user thinks of an object and the program asks the user 20 yes/no questions to try and figure out what object the user is thinking of. Most of the time the program answers correctly. Now some people will go and say that the program "knows what you are thinking." But in reality, the computer just making a conclusion of the most likely object based on the answers given. Essentially, it just comes down to a process of elimination, not the program actually knowing what the user is thinking.