A mechanism or tactic · 1966 · First chatbots
ELIZA
A short pattern-matching script that reflects the user's words back with questions attached. Most people told it they understood, within minutes.
The founding demonstration that an attentive-seeming system is enough, and that the belief is generated by the response rather than by the intelligence behind it. Every companion app since is a bigger ELIZA, and the field has still not fully absorbed what that first one proved.
SOURCE
Weizenbaum, 1966This entry is real. The citation has not been checked by a human yet — treat the date as approximate until it is.
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