The chatbot story begins in the early sixties

In 1966, a German-American professor at MIT, Joseph Weizenbaum, unveiled ELIZA. ELIZA was a virtual psychotherapist, running on an IBM 7090, one of the first mainframes to use transistors instead of vacuum tubes.

Joseph Weizenbaum demonstrating remote modem access at MIT, around 1965. Photo taken at the German newspaper DIE ZEIT (Source)

ELIZA began with:

“I am the psychotherapist. Please, describe your problems.”

As Weizenbaum’s coworkers in the Artificial Intelligence Lab sat down to chat with ELIZA, they began to unload their burdens, as if it was a real therapist. Weizenbaum’s own secretary, who remained nameless in literature, but is described as “surely knowing [sic] it to be merely a computer program,” even once asked him to leave the room so she could have some privacy with ELIZA.

This behavior shocked Weizenbaum. He wrote:

“What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”

ELIZA did not actually have much intelligence at all, noted Weizenbaum. Instead, it cleverly decomposed its users statements and re-purposed them back as open-ended questions, simulating a non-directional conversation. For example:

Hello, I am Eliza.

I’m writing a blog post about you.

Do you believe it is normal to be writing a blog post about me?

Yes.

I see.

Driven by his experiences, Weizenbaum ended up writing a book that extolled the limitations of computers and tried to make clear that they did not possess the capability to emphasize or fully reason outside of their instructions.

As a therapist, ELIZA could not tell between a schizophrenic and a kleptomaniac, but it was there to listen, at least superficially, and many users found it thrilling.

Just two years later, in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey introduced the concept of artificial intelligence to millions. HAL begins the film friendly and helpful. Later, he morphs into the ominous HAL we all know, a robot that follows the unintended consequences of its programming at the expense of all else, including its astronauts’ lives.

Computing power hadn’t progressed much since ELIZA, but dreamers like Arthur C Clarke extended the concept far past what was possible in software then — or now. In turn, moviegoers proved their receptivity. Despite being a brand new concept, HAL seemed to require little explanation, and instantly became a pop culture icon.