AI glossary · Ethics, safety and privacy
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is treating an AI as if it had human feelings, thoughts or intentions, because it talks like a person.
Also called AI anthropomorphism, ELIZA effect
In more detail
Chatbots that say “I think” or “I understand” make it natural to imagine a mind behind the words. The effect was noticed as early as the 1960s with ELIZA, a very simple chatbot people confided in.
It can lead people to over-trust AI or form strong emotional bonds with it (see AI companion). Remember that the system is predicting text, however human it sounds.
Related terms
AI companionAn AI companion is a chatbot designed for ongoing personal conversation, friendship or role-play rather than for getting tasks done.Automation biasAutomation bias is the tendency to trust a computer’s answer more than we should, and to check it less carefully than we would a person’s.Turing testThe Turing test, proposed by Alan Turing in 1950, asks whether a machine can hold a text conversation that people can’t tell apart from a human’s.ChatbotA chatbot is a program you talk to in text or voice that replies like a person would. Modern AI chatbots like ChatGPT are powered by large language models.
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