Teaching the Machine

Meet Eliza.

Meet Alice.

“When a human encounters an apparently nonsensical text, the human will usually attempt to extrapolate some meaning through clues and cues. We may refer to other texts or previous experience. We might draw incredibly whimsical conclusions about meaning that do not stack up to anyone else. In other words, computers cannot read poetry; only humans can.” (Weight, p.420)

The more you talk with Eliza or Alice, the more they learn, the more they can seem human and have human conversations. Yet we realise that they are not human. We can only teach the machine so much. As Weight says, we can refer to the whimsical, speak in metaphor, pick up seemingly nonsensical clues. We can read poetry.

It is for this reason that a computer, an apparatus cannot be part of a dialogue. We can only give it so many human features. This is why the machine is displaced, pushed to the side into the trilogue, part of the conversation, the creation but not central to it.