Re: [xmca] Message in a Bottle

[Steve Gabosch <stevegabosch@me.com>]

Your thought on chatbots copied here has had me thinking a little,  
David:

On May 26, 2009, at 6:49 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> [For voluntary communication to take place] ... there has to be  
> exactly what is missing when a human pretends to communicate with a  
> chatbot ... : there has to be a theory of reciprocal willingness to  
> communicate based on the assumption that the other is a subject like  
> oneself. That is the key distinction between subject-subject  
> relations and subject-object relations that I think Leontiev ignored.

The chatbot example is a very good one to make your point.  As long as  
you play along and act as though (or perhaps even believe) that the  
computer program behind a chatbot represents a reciprocal willingness  
to communicate as a real person, you can keep up a real dialogue.

I remember a few years ago playing with the Eliza program, a chatbot  
developed in the 1960's that is alive and well on the internet.  This  
automated Rogerian-style therapist asks things like "how do you feel  
about that?"  It repeats things you say back in question formats that  
are designed to elicit you to talk more about yourself.  As long as  
you play along, it works surprisingly well, especially if you don't  
try to give it trick questions.  Doing this is an application of that  
subjective thing we so often do in the movies, the "suspension of  
disbelief."  At first, one may feel inclined give the chatbot the  
benefit of the doubt, and actually try to seriously talk to it.  This  
kind of dialogue could even be a little therapeutic!  Maybe you could  
use a few moments to describe how you feel about something ...

But as soon as you become exasperated with your interlocuter being  
just a computer program, the communication breaks down.  And what  
happens next is just what you suggest: you no longer communicate as  
though there is reciprocal willingness from a fellow subject.  You now  
talk only as though you are speaking with a sophisticated object.  You  
may even get the impulse to devise ways to trick it into acting like  
the dumb machine you know it really is!  That is when you may discover  
that programmers can have a wicked sense of humor about these things ...

Your generalization about Leontiev makes me want to read where he  
spoke about subject-subject relations.  Given the general, mediational  
character of human activity, I am wondering, from a CHAT framework,  
what a "subject-subject" relation actually is.  Isn't culture  
(objects, artifacts, words, bodies, etc. etc.) always in the middle?

Cheers,
- Steve


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