The ELIZA Effect

Abstract

Abstract This chapter focuses on ELIZA, the first chatbot program, developed in the 1960s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Joseph Weizenbaum to engage in written conversations with users of the MAC time-sharing system. The program’s alleged capacity for conversation attracted the attention of audiences in the United States and the world, and Weizenbaum’s book Computer Power and Human Reasons (1976) drew readers from well outside his discipline of computer science. In the process, the program presented AI in ways that sharply contrasted with the vision of human-machine symbiosis that dominated approaches to human-computer interaction at the time. Drawing on Weizenbaum’s writings, computer science literature, and journalistic reports, the chapter argues that the impact of this alternative vision was not without consequence, informing the development of critical approaches to digital media as well as of actual technologies and pragmatic strategies in AI research.

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