Anybody remember Eliza? An early prototype of a chatbot, from nearly 60 years ago.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
The program posed as a psychotherapist, engaging its human interlocutors in conversations in which it would pick up on certain things they said and ask them further questions, which would lead to more questions, and so on.
I remember tinkering with a cut-down Eliza routine on my Camputers Lynx microcomputer (1983), using BASIC. It seemed like a lot of fun at the time. Most humans would notice pretty quickly that Eliza's questions were falling into repetitive loops like some sort of Groundhog Day, but it was surprising how many people continued to think that it/she was a human. If you got really fed up and swore at Eliza, she would reprimand you for your bad language!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZAELIZA's creator, Weizenbaum, intended the program as a method to explore communication between humans and machines. He was surprised and shocked that individuals, including Weizenbaum's secretary, attributed human-like feelings to the computer program.
Many academics believed that the program would be able to positively influence the lives of many people, particularly those with psychological issues, and that it could aid doctors working on such patients' treatment. While ELIZA was capable of engaging in discourse, it could not converse with true understanding. However, many early users were convinced of ELIZA's intelligence and understanding, despite Weizenbaum's insistence to the contrary.
Happy days.
BJ