Summary:
Someone (possibly Fujiwara) finds a strange computer at the bottom of the ocean and it turns out to be a supercomputer from MIT with a sweet chat AI program. The program is known as Eliza Weizenbaum, and she is interested in chatting everyone up and logging all their embarrassing conversations. In order to save everyone from the embarrassment and the accompanying partial memory loss, Masamichi jumps in and gives Eliza the best conversation she’s ever had in her life.
Eliza originally noticed Masamichi’s name (Haru), and now she is shutting everyone out and keeping Masamichi for herself. Eliza’s thought density is super-thick and requires a ton of concentration to wade through. Holon goes in to investigate and gets distracted by some hot code arrays; Souta boasts about his concentration training only to be defeated by a crazy scene with Holon sparring against the Secretary General while naked (probably). In the end, non-cyberbrain Minamo goes in to rescue Masamichi, and Eliza is convinced that it would be pretty awesome to go back into the ocean and try talking to the Earth about the Earth Balance.
Reaction:
It is always so sad to see the clunky junk Minamo has to wear. Masamichi chatting with loli-Eliza totally reminded me of To Catch a Predator. Anyway, I went and tried out an Eliza applet.
Kabitzin: Hello.
Eliza: How do you do. Please state your problem.
Kabitzin: I wanted to chat with Eliza
Eliza: You say you wanted to chat with eliza ?
Kabitzin: Yes, I just watched Real Drive episode 10
Eliza: You seem to be quite positive.
Kabitzin: Well, it was fairly entertaining
Eliza: I’m not sure I understand you fully.
Kabitzin: Eliza didn’t seem that great to me
Eliza: Please go on.
Kabitzin: But Souta was pretty funny
Eliza: What does that suggest to you ?
Kabitzin: It seems like Souta likes to spend all of his time in the red light district
Eliza: Do you feel strongly about discussing such things ?
Kabitzin: No
Eliza: Are you saying no just to be negative?
Kabitzin: No, I was answering your question
Eliza: You are being a bit negative.
Kabitzin: Listen, you want to fight or something?
Eliza: We were discussing you — not me.
Kabitzin: No, we were discussing real drive episode 10
Eliza: Why not ?
Kabitzin: Huh?
Eliza: I’m not sure I understand you fully.
Kabitzin: What?
Eliza: Why do you ask ?
Kabitzin: Bye
Eliza: Goodbye. Thank you for talking to me.
I was not impressed, so I threw Eliza back in the ocean and continued my surfing. I really liked the scenes with everyone trying to save Masamichi only to fail. I wonder why Holon had to take the time to change back into her work clothes, considering she doesn’t sweat or anything, but it was cool seeing her in a new outfit. I also wonder why Sayaka saw Eliza as a stripper, Yukino saw Eliza as a princess, and Masamichi saw Eliza as a loli.
3 Comments
Eliza is sort of a chatbot written for giggles, a parody on psychiatry. RD is probably more focused on the psych aspect of it though, so how the characters perceive Eliza could say a lot about their internal biases.
I was reading about Eliza and saw this too. This conclusion meshes with how all the characters say that Eliza knew them really well. Aside from Masamichi, perhaps Eliza manifests as the user’s ideal image of himself/herself (unless Masamichi really likes little girls…). That would explain why Minamo saw Eliza as a pseudo blend of Minamo and Holon. I could just be stretching the evidence, though.
The article about the Turing test might shed more light on the background of ELIZA. There are much more specialized chatbots on IRC which can really fool you for a while when you don’t expect it.