logoalt Hacker News

vunderbayesterday at 5:28 PM1 replyview on HN

It wasn't intended as such, but I take your point.

To provide a bit more context: Weizenbaum (a computer scientist in the 60s) developed ELIZA, a LISP-based chatbot that was loosely modeled on Rogerian psychotherapy. It was designed to respond in a reflective way in order to elicit details from the user.

What he found was that, despite the program being relatively primitive in nature (relying on simple natural language parsing heuristics), people he regarded as otherwise intelligent and rational would disclose remarkable amounts of personal information and quickly form emotional attachments to what was, in reality, little more than a glorified pattern-matching system.


Replies

quectophotonyesterday at 5:49 PM

If it helps, I didn't find anything wrong with your comment.

I appreciate the link and the info :)