{"id":671263,"date":"2026-10-31T23:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T23:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671263\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T23:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T23:08:08","slug":"inventing-eliza-how-the-first-chatbot-transforms-perceptions-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/671263\/","title":{"rendered":"Inventing ELIZA: how the first chatbot transforms perceptions of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

An author meeting with artist Peggy Weil \u2014 and the world\u2019s first chatbot<\/p>\n

By Dora Woodruff<\/a><\/p>\n

Oct. 31, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

ELIZA begins every conversation in the exact same way: \u201cHOW DO YOU DO. PLEASE TELL ME YOUR PROBLEM.\u201d<\/p>\n

ELIZA isn\u2019t a person. It\u2019s the world\u2019s first chatbot, designed in the 1960s by MIT computer science professor Joseph Weizenbaum. On Oct. 22, ELIZA appeared on a laptop screen in the MIT Press Bookstore. Peggy Weil SM \u201982, an artist and a coauthor of the recently published book Inventing Eliza: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI, invited attendees to try out ELIZA for themselves at her author meeting.<\/p>\n

One participant typed, \u201cMy problem is that I\u2019m hungry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIS IT BECAUSE YOU ARE HUNGRY THAT YOU CAME TO ME,\u201d ELIZA responded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cARE YOU SAYING \u2018NO\u2019 JUST TO BE NEGATIVE\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The participant chuckled and typed, \u201cNo, I came to you to experience talking to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYOU ARE BEING A BIT NEGATIVE\u201d<\/p>\n

Inventing Eliza is an interdisciplinary book with a team of eight authors, including cognitive scientist Jeff Shrager, literature professor Mark Marino, philosopher Peter Millican, and \u201csoftware archaeologist\u201d Arthur Schwarz. Weil stressed that the book is \u201cmultimedia.\u201d She opened a copy, pointing out the blocks of code \u2014 complete with detailed in-line comments \u2014 among the pages.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inventing Eliza \u201cisn\u2019t exactly light reading,\u201d she explained with a laugh. \u201cYou\u2019re not necessarily meant to read the book from beginning to end.\u201d She turned to a new page: another snippet of code, along with ELIZA\u2019s dialogue in large, red font. \u201cCode as literature,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Peggy Weil is a multidisciplinary artist and a member of the MIT Media Lab. Why is she fascinated by chatbots?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perception and illusion<\/p>\n

A throughline of Weil\u2019s art focuses on \u201cperception and illusion.\u201d Her project 3D Wallpaper (1976 and 2018) creates an illusion of depth on a flat surface. Camera Obscura (1978) shows the Empire State Building upside-down, a reference to the way our brains process visual information. 88 Cores, which premiered in 2018 and takes viewers through 110,000 years of the Greenland Ice Sheet, focuses on our perception of time and our difficulties with processing immense timescales.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do chatbots have to do with perception and illusion? It\u2019s the illusion of ELIZA as a human that intrigues Weil. She explained the ELIZA effect: a tendency to project human traits onto machines, even when the machines are quite basic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weizenbaum, ELIZA\u2019s developer, saw the ELIZA effect in action. \u201c[His] own secretary would ask for privacy to talk to it!\u201d Weil exclaimed, \u201cAs if it was human!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

One participant who tried out ELIZA at the event complained, \u201cShe\u2019s judging me!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

ELIZA is a rudimentary program, using around 420 lines of code to rephrase the user\u2019s replies into questions. When those 420 lines of code can\u2019t parse a user\u2019s response, ELIZA falls back on one of four hard-coded phrases: \u201cI SEE,\u201d \u201cHMM,\u201d \u201cGO ON, PLEASE,\u201d and \u201cPLEASE CONTINUE.\u201d Even so, ELIZA creates a surprisingly strong illusion of a conscious listener.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the 1960s, the strength of the ELIZA effect took Weizenbaum by surprise. After he explained the \u201ctrick\u201d to users, even showing them the code, they still seemed to experience a connection with it. He was deeply troubled as peers began suggesting using bots for therapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that [his] work would be\u2026 inserted in the most human of relationships was an\u2026 anathema to him,\u201d Weil said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weil is especially interested in how the interface of a chatbot affects the user\u2019s perception of the conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen younger people think of bots, they think of screens and phones, not pieces of paper being printed out,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She directed attendees to findingeliza.org<\/a>, a site created by the same team of eight authors. Across eight different user interfaces \u2014 from the original 1966 Teletype 33 interface to early 2000s instant messages to a modern ChatGPT interface \u2014 users can chat with the same original ELIZA. Weil invited the users to reflect on how these different interfaces affected the ELIZA experience. Did ELIZA in a Twitter comment feel more human than ELIZA in a 1960s terminal?\u00a0<\/p>\n

To understand chatbots, simplify them<\/p>\n

As a young art student at Harvard, Weil had built a room-sized camera obscura: a dark chamber with a small hole that projects an image onto a surface, like a basic camera. She projected a large image of Harvard\u2019s church steeple onto the room\u2019s wall. Understanding the very basics of camera technology allowed her to gain a deeper understanding of visual perception.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Analogously, \u201cthinking about an early, hand-coded AI is instructive for thinking about more complex, modern cases,\u201d she explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To understand ChatGPT, it is necessary to first understand \u201cmuch more simplified chatbots.\u201d Modern chatbots can feel like magic tricks to users, but Inventing Eliza helps the reader peek under the technology\u2019s hood by examining its earliest forms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Of course, ELIZA does not work the same way that modern LLMs do; it relies on hard-coded formulas and a predetermined set of trigger words, not vast datasets and machine learning. Even then, Weil sought to show her readers how similar the psychological effects on the user are. Whether we\u2019re chatting with ELIZA or Claude, our brains are imagining more than a machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ELIZA: A Rogerian therapist?<\/p>\n

Weil encouraged listeners to reflect on ELIZA\u2019s ripple effects: how early design choices in primitive chatbots influence how chatbots are made and used today. She explained that Weizenbaum designed ELIZA with a specific style of therapy in mind: Rogerian, or person-centered, therapy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Rogerian therapy, developed by Carl Rogers in the 1940s, a therapist is meant to be empathetic, accepting, and nondirective. The therapist\u2019s goal is to listen without judgement, focus on the patient\u2019s present feelings and experiences, and help the patient feel seen. In Freudian therapy, by contrast, the therapist\u2019s role is to find patterns, explore unconscious belief systems, and examine childhood experiences. The therapist\u2019s style might be analytical and interpretive, rather than warm and personal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Inspired by Rogerian therapy, ELIZA is designed to validate users\u2019 experiences and feelings, reflecting their own words back at them. Tell ELIZA \u201cI feel depressed,\u201d and it responds: \u201cTELL ME ABOUT SUCH FEELINGS.\u201d Tell it \u201cMy family doesn\u2019t understand me,\u201d and it responds: \u201cYOUR FAMILY DOESN\u2019T UNDERSTAND YOU.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weil wonders: what if ELIZA had been modeled after other styles of therapy, like Freudian therapy? Would modern chatbots sound different? One attendee speculated: \u201cMaybe they wouldn\u2019t be so sycophantic. Or maybe, they would tell you that you want to kill your father and marry your mother.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An author meeting with artist Peggy Weil \u2014 and the world\u2019s first chatbot By Dora Woodruff Oct. 31,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-671263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}