The, Nearest Neighbors, By Sherry Turkle - 886 Words

Ever since the invention of the computer, humans have always wanted to create an artificial intelligence that can act and feel the way a human does. In Alone Together by Sherry Turkle, she explains that through games and artificial intelligence, humans have been changing the way that both children and adults think and feel, thus bridging the gap between emotional machines (humans) and intelligent machines (computers). Turkle is able to show how her experiences through working at MIT in the 70’s to how children perceive things as alive enough in the form of a video game, as a way of explaining that gap between man and machine has been getting closer and closer. The first chapter offers a strong viewing of how humans have been trying to close the gap of emotional and intelligent machines since the 1970’s. In the first section of the first chapter, â€Å"Nearest Neighbors†, Turkle explains how Weizenbaum’s program ELIZA, which was being analyzed at MIT, was b eing used to show how words can be strung together. The students were inputting dialogue to the program, and it was responding. If the user would say something about their mother, the program would respond with a response that a human may offer. â€Å"ELIZA had no model of what a mother might be or any way to represent the feeling of anger. What it could do was take strings of words and turn them into questions or restate them as interpretations† (31). This model of thought would go on to be used throughout the attempts of