Eliza is the name of the first computer Chatbot written between 1964 and 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum from MIT University. The programme was originally called “Doctor” and she followed the principles of a Rogerian psychotherapist  (also known as “person centred therapy”). Her behaviour parodies that of a psychologist. She was so good at it that there were some who did not believe that they had been speaking to a machine even after they’d been told as much. Eliza is named after Eliza Doolittle, a character in Pygmalion, a play by Bernard Shaw about a cockney flower girl who is taken in by an English gentleman and taught to speak English properly. The play was later popularized by the musical movie, My Fair Lady (1964) starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.

Essentially, Eliza was the first successful “Artificial Intelligence” and her existence is not just the result of Weizenbaum who wrote her. A great father of modern computing is Alan Turing. He was an Englishman who showed a great aptitude for decoding secret messages in World War II. He went on to develop the principles and precepts of many of the modern programming languages that we still rely on today. One thing that has immortalised him in popular culture is the “Turing Test”. The name of this test was derived from a 1950’s paper written by Turing, which begins with the chilling words, “Can machines think?” Although you may not be familiar with the name, you have almost certainly come across it. Every time you are asked to type “the above” letters (usually a slightly wonky image) into a box on a website submission (to prove that you are a person and not a programme,) you are submitting to a “Turing Test”. The test that separates you, a human being from Eliza and her kind.

If you’re curious, go ahead and have a chat with Eliza here. She’s great fun.

Eliza proves that the future of development has no boundaries. It is not simply one or two people who determine its path. Although programming remains a relatively new field, we are not re-inventing the wheel. We are standing on the shoulders of giants like Joseph Weizenbaum and Alan Turing.

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