Eliza Effect

In the 1960s a simple program named ELIZA played therapist by reflecting people's sentences back at them — "Tell me more about your mother." Users poured out their hearts, some begging for privacy with the machine. They knew it was a program. It did not matter.

The effect: we read understanding into anything that mimics the forms of understanding. A few well-timed questions, a sympathetic cadence, and the human heart supplies the entire mind on the other side.

This matters more now than in 1968. Machines that speak fluently are everywhere, and fluency is exactly the trick ELIZA ran. The machine that talks like a friend is granted friendship; the one that talks like an expert is granted expertise.

The rule of thumb: judge the machine by what it does, never by how it sounds. Warmth of manner is cheap to manufacture. It is the listener's heart that makes it feel expensive — so spend yours carefully.