Editing ELIZA (section)

==Overview==
[[File:Video Game Museum in Berlin (44129332940).jpg|thumb|A conversation between a human and ELIZA's DOCTOR script]]
[[Joseph Weizenbaum]]'s ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, created a conversational interaction somewhat similar to what might take place in the office of "a [non-directive] psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview"{{sfn|Weizenbaum|1976|p=188}} and to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial".<ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1016/S0747-5632(01)00004-8 |title=From Eliza to Internet: A brief history of computerized assessment |journal=Computers in Human Behavior |volume=17 |issue=3 |pages=295–314 |year=2001 |last1=Epstein |first1=J. |last2=Klinkenberg |first2=W. D. }}</ref> While ELIZA is best known for acting in the manner of a psychotherapist, the speech patterns are due to the data and instructions supplied by the DOCTOR script.<ref name=":4">{{cite journal |doi=10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.31 |jstor=20206337 |title=ELIZA REDUX: A Mutable Iteration |journal=Leonardo |volume=40 |issue=1 |pages=31–6 |year=2007 |last1=Wortzel |first1=Adrianne |s2cid=57565169 }}</ref> ELIZA itself examined the text for keywords, applied values to said keywords, and transformed the input into an output; the script that ELIZA ran determined the keywords, set the values of keywords, and set the rules of transformation for the output.<ref name=":1">{{cite journal |doi=10.1145/365153.365168 |title=ELIZA—a computer program for the study of natural language communication between man and machine |journal=Communications of the ACM |volume=9 |pages=36–45 |year=1966 |last1=Weizenbaum |first1=Joseph |s2cid=1896290 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Weizenbaum chose to make the DOCTOR script in the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge",{{sfn|Weizenbaum|1976}}{{pn|date=April 2025}} allowing it to reflect back the patient's statements to carry the conversation forward.{{sfn|Weizenbaum|1976}}{{pn|date=April 2025}} The result was a somewhat intelligent-seeming response that reportedly deceived some early users of the program.<ref name="Wardip">{{cite book |last=Wardrip-Fruin |first=Noah |oclc=827013290 |page=33 |title=Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies |date=2009 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=9780262013437 |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts}}</ref>

Weizenbaum named his program ELIZA after [[Eliza Doolittle]], a working-class character in [[George Bernard Shaw]]'s ''[[Pygmalion (play)|Pygmalion]]'' (also appearing in the musical ''[[My Fair Lady]]'', which was based on the play and was hugely popular at the time). According to Weizenbaum, ELIZA's ability to be "incrementally improved" by various users made it similar to Eliza Doolittle,<ref name=":1"/> since Eliza Doolittle was taught to speak with an [[upper-class]] [[Accent (sociolinguistics)|accent]] in Shaw's play.<ref name=":9" /><ref name="weizenbaumobit">{{Citation |last=Markoff |first=John |title=Joseph Weizenbaum, Famed Programmer, Is Dead at 85 |date=2008-03-13 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/world/europe/13weizenbaum.html |author-link=John Markoff |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=2009-01-07}}.</ref> However, unlike the human character in Shaw's play, ELIZA is incapable of learning new patterns of speech or new words through interaction alone. Edits must be made directly to ELIZA's active script in order to change the manner by which the program operates.

Weizenbaum first implemented ELIZA in his own [[SLIP (programming language)|SLIP]] list-processing language, where, depending upon the initial entries by the user, the illusion of human intelligence could appear, or be dispelled through several interchanges.<ref name=":8" /> Some of ELIZA's responses were so convincing that Weizenbaum and several others have anecdotes of users becoming emotionally attached to the program, occasionally forgetting that they were conversing with a computer.{{sfn|Weizenbaum|1976}}{{pn|date=April 2025}} Weizenbaum's own secretary reportedly asked Weizenbaum to leave the room so that she and ELIZA could have a real conversation. Weizenbaum was surprised by this, later writing: "I had not realized&nbsp;... that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people."{{sfn|Weizenbaum|1976|p=7}}

In 1966, interactive computing (via a teletype) was new. It was 11 years before the personal computer became familiar to the general public, and three decades before most people encountered attempts at [[natural language processing]] in Internet services like [[Ask.com]] or PC help systems such as Microsoft Office [[Office Assistant|Clippit]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Meyer |first=Robinson |date=2015-06-23 |title=Even Early Focus Groups Hated Clippy |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/clippy-the-microsoft-office-assistant-is-the-patriarchys-fault/396653/ |access-date=2023-11-07 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}</ref> Although those programs included years of research and work, ELIZA remains a milestone simply because it was the first time a programmer had attempted such a human-machine interaction with the goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human–''human'' interaction.{{Citation needed|date=June 2013}}

At the [[International Conference on Computer Communications|ICCC 1972]], ELIZA was brought together with another early artificial-intelligence program named [[PARRY]] for a computer-only conversation. While ELIZA was built to speak as a doctor, PARRY was intended to simulate a patient with [[schizophrenia]].<ref name="PerryElizaAtlantic">{{cite magazine |last1=Megan |first1=Garber |title=When PARRY Met ELIZA: A Ridiculous Chatbot Conversation From 1972 |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/when-parry-met-eliza-a-ridiculous-chatbot-conversation-from-1972/372428/ |magazine=The Atlantic |access-date=19 January 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170118165304/http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/when-parry-met-eliza-a-ridiculous-chatbot-conversation-from-1972/372428/ |archive-date=2017-01-18 |url-status=live |date=Jun 9, 2014}}</ref>