Research · January 1966
Joseph Weizenbaum published a program that held an English conversation using text patterns.
ELIZA showed that simple pattern substitution can create an impression of understanding — an early documented observation about how people trust conversational systems.
The program has no world model and no grasp of meaning. The author later wrote separately about the risk of attributing understanding to machines.
Communications of the ACM · Published January 1966
Both examine how a conversation with a machine is perceived by people; Weizenbaum documents the impression it creates.
Both address machine processing of natural language, but by different means: patterns versus logical inference.
ELIZA later used the same pattern-matching device.
The book was written after the author saw how people reacted to his own ELIZA program.
Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to CalculationThe same gap between a convincing answer and understanding that ELIZA exposed.
RFC 439, 'PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR', reproduces PARRY's conversation of 18 September 1972 with DOCTOR, ELIZA's psychotherapist script.
RFC 439: PARRY Encounters the DOCTORShieber writes that the programs' devices, repeating earlier statements and answers keyed to trigger words, the 'tricks of the eliza trade', were ubiquitous.
Lessons from a Restricted Turing Test (arXiv:cmp-lg/9404002v1)