ELIZA The Chat Bot

“ELIZA – A computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine”, Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT, 1966 —– This ELIZA version was entirely rewritten by me (Kai Kostack) and is almost an exact port of the original program. But I have also introduced some useful new extensions, which will provide ELIZA with a way better recognition of the user’s input. Furthermore, there is now an realistic indicator to show you how deep your conversation went. And last but not least the Neural Index, which is interesting for people who know how ELIZA exactly works. —– The ELIZA effect: This term comes from this famous ELIZA program originally by Joseph Weizenbaum, which simulated a Rogerian psychoanalyst by rephrasing many of the patient’s statements as questions and posing them to the patient. It worked by simple pattern recognition and substitution of key words into canned phrases. It was so convincing, however, that there are many anecdotes about people becoming very emotionally caught up in dealing with ELIZA. All this was due to people’s tendency to attach to words meanings which the computer never put there. The ELIZA effect is a {Good Thing} when writing a programming language, but it can blind you to serious shortcomings when analyzing an Artificial Intelligence system.