Joseph Weizenbaum's Doctor Computer Program
Beating The Turing Test: An Introduction to Weizenbaum’s Eliza
Oct 19, 2008
Alan Turing famously created what is now known as ‘The Turing Test.’
It was designed as a test to see if a computer could pass itself off as a human being. However, no computer was ever designed or built specifically to play Turing’s test, nor has any computer officially beaten the test. But there are some computers in existence today that theoretically, would be able to succeed if they were to play the game.
Joseph Weizenbaum & ‘Eliza’
Joseph Weizenbaum created a computer program known as ‘Eliza,’ or ‘Doctor.’ Eliza was given the script of a Rogerian Psychiatrist and was fairly simple in the way it was structured. The computer, on receiving the input from the person accessing the program would rephrase it and send it back as another question. This is how a Rogerian therapist would proceed with an actual person. So, for example:
‘X might say ‘‘I feel depressed,’’ to which Eliza would likely respond: ‘‘Why do you think you are depressed?’’ This happens because ‘it (Eliza) simply zeros in on a particular word or phrase it has been taught to look out for and responds by choosing, virtually at random, one of a small number of fixed responses.’ (Harel, 2003, p.199)
The Illusion of Intelligence
Weizenbaum built ‘Doctor’ to demonstrate that ‘it is easy to ‘‘appear intelligent.’’’ (Harel, 2003, p.200)
Eliza was so successful in her impersonation of human speech and communication that people accessing the program believed they were conversing with another person. Weizenbaum always maintained that any type of understanding that people believed they felt when talking to Eliza was simply an illusion.
It has since become widely acknowledged that the computer program ‘Doctor,’ has little or no intelligence. If it is ever described as having intelligence, it is at the most basic of levels and simply not comparable to that of human intelligence.
Beating the Turing Test
Despite all of its flaws, Weizenbaum’s computer program successfully managed to convince people that she was another person, demonstrating how easy it is to program a computer that appears to ‘think’ in the way that people do.
Turing’s test was designed so that if the interrogator was unable to discern which was the person and which was the computer, then the logical assumption would be that the computer would have to be as intelligent as the person.
Regardless of Eliza’s obvious lack of intelligence, she managed to convince others she was a therapist. Therefore, it could be said that Eliza has unwittingly passed the Turing test, or managed to succeed in a situation where the circumstances were nearly the same as they would be in the imitation game.
This demonstrates to us that one of two things must be true. Either human thought and communication are so easy to impersonate that an incredibly simple computer program can achieve this, or Turing's test must be flawed, because its structure and rules are not strict enough to filter out unintelligent programs such as ‘Doctor.’
References:
Harel, D., 2003, Computers LTD: What They Really Can’t Do, Oxford: Oxford University Press
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