Why AI needs more human intelligence if it's to succeed

I got suckered into watching "The Robot Will See You Now" during Channel 4's November week of robot programmes. Shoddy though it was, it conveyed more of the truth than the more technically correct offerings. Its premise: a family of hand-picked reality TV stereotypes being given access to robot Jess, complete with a "cute" flat glass face that looked like a thermostat display, and they consulted he/she/it about their relationship problems and other worries. Channel 4 admitted Jess operates "with some human assistance", which could well have meant somebody sitting in the next room speaking into a microphone, but Jess was immediately recognisable to me as ELIZA in a smart new plastic shell. ELIZA, for those too young to know, was one of the first AI natural language programs, written in 1964 by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT – and 16 years later by me while learning Lisp.