Ever wondered what it’s like to talk to a therapist for free? What if I told you that you could?
As one’s probably stated before, you can’t spell ELIZA without AI. Before the age of AI chatbots such as Chat GPT or Gemini, there stood ELIZA. Developed back in the 1960s by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in just 420 lines of code, more specifically – Michigan Algorithm Decoder Symmetric List Processor (MAD-SLIP) as a programming language – software researchers and “historians” call this AI the pioneer of chatbot simulations. Hidden away in MIT’s archives for 60 years, it was reconstructed from those archives by Stanford scientist Jeff Shrager and MIT archivist Myles Crowley in December 2021. Taking the time and effort to painstakingly recreate the program, even with its existing bugs, to maintain authenticity.
Unlike other programming languages, ELIZA functions as a chatbot by acting like a psychotherapist to “sidestep the problem of giving the program a database of real-world knowledge”. Using formal phrases such as “Please tell me your problem.” or “In what way?” Shrager further comments on the nature of ELIZA’s programming language being more observational in nature by prioritising listening to the user’s request rather than trying to complete their sentences. Common instances of this would include users stating that they’d feel sad in order to gauge ELIZA’s response. In this context, she’d take the keyword “sad” and make sure to include it in her own responses to encourage the users to respond enthusiastically- “Why do you feel sad?”. I believe that it’s safe to say that many people were fooled by the AI’s ability to emote effectively.
Although this program is slightly outdated by 60+ years, there is no doubt that ELIZA is still considered a milestone in terms of the development of AI. Why? Simply because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-to-machine interaction with the goal of imitating human-to-human interactions. It paved the way for our modern-day virtual assistants such as Siri or Alexa, customer service bots, and, most importantly of all, modern-day chatbots! With ELIZA’s patterned and rudimentary language scripts, talking to an AI had never been more attractive to the public.
So why not give the model a try? It’s up on the Internet, waiting for its newest patient. Would you like to be its latest patient for free?
Edited by Anu Sanyaolu.
