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Here are some comments on the advantages and disadvantages of
Eliza-like systems:
- (Simulated) Intelligence: Eliza-like systems `mimic' intelligent
behaviour quite effectively by recognising key words and phrases and
using a lookup table (effectively) to choose one of a few ways of
responding. However, the success depends heavily of the notion that
the user has a fairly restricted notion of the expected response from
the system.
- Quality of Response: limited by the
sophistication of the ways in which they can process the input text at
a syntactic level. For example, the number of templates available is a
serious limitation.
- Coherence: The raw system described above imposes no structure on the
conversation. Each statement is based entirely on the current
input. (More complex versions of Eliza can do a little better.) Any
sense of intelligence depends strongly on the coherence of the
conversation as judged by the user.
- Semantics: Such systems have no semantic representation
of the content of either the user's input or the reply.