Elissa Meets ELIZA
Thanks to Gary Farber, my classmate from P.S. 99 back in the 60s and SF fandom comrade in Fistfa back in the 70s, for the link to this article from April 2008 about the death of ELIZA's inventor, Joseph Weizenbaum.
I first learned of ELIZA when I was an undergrad psychology major. Patterned after (and parodying) the Rogerian style of non-directive therapy, ELIZA was a technological breakthrough in its day. Anecdotes abound about people interacting with ELIZA who thought -- at least briefly -- that they were communicating with a flesh-and-blood, human therapist.
As a psych major named Elissa, I had long been curious about the program. In addition to clinical and research psychologist Vaughan Bell's fascinating interview with ELIZA and Romeo Vitelli's great follow-up comment, the article includes a link to an online version of ELIZA. I just had to toddle over there.
Writes Michal Wallace on the site, "ELIZA has almost no intelligence whatsoever, only tricks like string substitution and canned responses based on keywords. Yet when the original ELIZA first appeared in the 60's, some people actually mistook her for human. The illusion of intelligence works best, however, if you limit your conversation to talking about yourself and your life."
You can find the transcript here, followed by its sequel, "Elissa and ELIZA Meet Abbott and Costello."
Elissa Meets ELIZA
Thanks to Gary Farber, my classmate from P.S. 99 back in the 60s and SF fandom comrade in Fistfa back in the 70s, for the link to this article from April 2008 about the death of ELIZA's inventor, Joseph Weizenbaum.
I first learned of ELIZA when I was an undergrad psychology major. Patterned after (and parodying) the Rogerian style of non-directive therapy, ELIZA was a technological breakthrough in its day. Anecdotes abound about people interacting with ELIZA who thought -- at least briefly -- that they were communicating with a flesh-and-blood, human therapist.
As a psych major named Elissa, I had long been curious about the program. In addition to clinical and research psychologist Vaughan Bell's fascinating interview with ELIZA and Romeo Vitelli's great follow-up comment, the article includes a link to an online version of ELIZA. I just had to toddle over there.
Writes Michal Wallace on the site, "ELIZA has almost no intelligence whatsoever, only tricks like string substitution and canned responses based on keywords. Yet when the original ELIZA first appeared in the 60's, some people actually mistook her for human. The illusion of intelligence works best, however, if you limit your conversation to talking about yourself and your life."
You can find the transcript here, followed by its sequel, "Elissa and ELIZA Meet Abbott and Costello."