Talk:ELIZA

message: All computers so far devised (ignoring Quantum Computers) are proven equivalent to the Turing Machine.  Even including Quantum Computers we have no working example of a computer which is not a Turing Machine.  If there is no magic spark or soul then Man is but another machine.
The brain is thought by many, including most proponents of Strong AI, to be a computer.  We have no evidence other than prejudice or arrogance to think it is a different type of computer (it has no known quantum mechanism) so quite possibly the brain is the equivalent of the Turing Machine.  So the limitations of computers put forward by Weizenbaum might apply also to Weizenbaum himself, as an instance of Man.
W. wrote an interesting program but, in the opinion of many, drew an unwarranted conclusion.
Psb777 07:04, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Opening comments

message: I had the impression that Eliza was quite different from what the article describes:
1. Eliza is a program that can be "taught" (via a configuration file) to converse.  That's why it was named after Eliza Doolittle (who _was_ taught to talk but _wasn't_ a therapist).
2. Several configuration files were created.  The one that talked like a therapist was named "Doctor".  This "Doctor" script is what the article describes.
:Most (if not all ) early iterations of ELIZA were designed to converse like psychotherapists. According to Weizenbaum, this is because "the psychiatric interview is one of the few examples of categorized dyadic natural language communication in which one of the participating pair is free to assume the pose of knowing almost nothing about the real world." http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/370000/365168/p36-weizenabaum.pdf?ip=128.239.206.136&id=365168&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&key=B33240AC40EC9E30.491D1E721DB3290B.4D4702B0C3E38B35.4D4702B0C3E38B35&CFID=585008447&CFTOKEN=10079424&__acm__=1456103732_58ba636b70850eb2a5bbc34e5db2fe6c
Davisagnes97 (talk) 03:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: In regards to the above--though it is not an acronym, in Weizenbaum's original research and reporting on ELIZA he referred to it in all caps.
Davisagnes97 (talk) 03:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

text: Weizenbaum capitalized it in the papers, so I think it's appropriate to follow his lead. Jshrager (talk) 03:15, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Oops. I see that you're already reply to someone else abou this. Sorry. Wrong place in the thread, and ... never mind. :-) Jshrager (talk) 03:16, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does this article describe "Eliza" or "Doctor" 

message: ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum who worked on the MULTICS Operating System.
24.251.115.172 (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is Weizenbaum's Implementation?

message: The original ACM paper "ELIZA--A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine" lives at http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=365168&dl=ACM&coll=GUIDE but is ACM-subscription only there.  It is also available elsewhere: http://i5.nyu.edu/~mm64/x52.9265/january1966.html
:This is great, I am adding this to the main page because I was looking for something exactly like this early and it really should be off the main page. Uselesswarrior 18:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Who the heck took this down and why? This link is invaluable and more enlightening  then any of the implementations or the article itself. I mean seriously, you take this link down and leave up project Prometheus? Have you tried that? It is the most awful eliza program I have ever used and there are links to porn sites off the linked site. Uselesswarrior 04:14, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Paper 

message: Here is a website where you can test Eliza: http://www.chayden.net/eliza/Eliza.html Do you think that this should be included in the article?
Trilby*foxglove 20:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eliza test 

message: I can't find any other references to this, and only a few to Ecala.  I think this sentence should be removed, or if nothing else moved somewhere else (it really breaks up the flow of the paragraph):
:... Although those programs included years of research and work (while Ecala eclipsed the functionality of ELIZA after less than two weeks of work by a single programmer)[citation needed], ELIZA remains a milestone simply because it was the...
Wolever (talk) 01:55, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of "Ecala eclipsed the functionality of ELIZA..."

message: Here is a suggested cleanup of the implementations list
* Using JavaScript: https://blog.ubisend.com/discover-chatbots/chatbot-eliza
* Source code in Java: http://chayden.net/eliza/Eliza.html
* Another Java-implementation of ELIZA: http://www.wedesoft.demon.co.uk/eliza/ -- No need for the dupe
* Using C on the TI-89: http://kaikostack.com/ti89_en.htm#eliza
* Using z80 Assembly on the TI-83 Plus: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/354/35463.html -- Neat, but not too helpful
* A perl module Chatbot::Eliza — example implementation, usage tutorial
* Trans-Tex Software has released shareware versions for Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X: http://www.tex-edit.com/index.html#Eliza -- probably violates linking suggestions, not very useful
* doctor.el (circa 1985) in Emacs  -- not very helpful, as there isn't a link
* Source code in Tcl: http://wiki.tcl.tk/9235
* The Indy Delphi oriented TCP/IP components suite has an Eliza implementation as demo. -- example implementations probably aren't too interesting...
*Pop-11 Eliza in the poplog system. Goes back to about 1976, when it was used for teaching AI at Sussex University. Now part of the free open source Poplog system. -- doesn't seem TOO unhelpful, and includes an online demonstration (which should probably be pointed out in the text)
* Source code in BASIC: http://www.atariarchives.org/bigcomputergames/showpage.php?page=22 -- neat, but not very helpful
*  ECC-Eliza for Windows (actual program is for DOS, but unpacker is for Windows) (rename .txt to .exe before running): http://www5.domaindlx.com/ecceliza1/ecceliza.txt  -- Seems a shade shifty
Wolever (talk) 02:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup to implementations 

message: The Weizenbaum article states "In 1962, he published a comparatively simple program called ELIZA..." This article states that ELIZA was "designed in 1966." Am I misunderstanding, or is there a contradiction?
--Sstrader (talk) 18:22, 7 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  1962 or 1966? 

message: I just read a funny anecdote about Eliza, in a book from 1978 written by Alex G. Bell and thought that maybe it could be included into the article, as it's a quite short story. I won't take the responsability though, and I don't master Wikipedia's syntax, so it'll be raw text. The book is "The Machine Plays Chess?", Pergamon 1978, and the anecdote is on page 41. Here it goes :
"In 1968 a student went into the AI office at MIT to use one of the on-line teletypes. One of these appeared to be free but had a note "Computer time reserved by Dan Bobrow". The student sat down and linked to Bobrow's home terminal (so he thought, he actually linked to ELIZA) with the following conversation :
*STUDENT : May I use your computer time ?
*ANSWER  : Do you want to use my computer time ?
*STUDENT : Yes.
*ANSWER : I understand.
*STUDENT : Are you coming in tonight ?
*ANSWER : Why do you want to know if I am coming in tonight ?
*STUDENT : Because I want to use the computer !!!
*ANSWER : I see.
*STUDENT : Well ?
*ANSWER : What do you mean, "well" ?
*STUDENT : Well, what's your answer ?
*ANSWER : Let's explore further why you want to use the computer.
After a further 10 minutes of increasing frustration the student rushed to a telephone and dialled Bobrow's home, rousing him from a deep sleep.
*STUDENT : What the heck do you think you're doing ?
*BOBROW : What do you mean, what the heck do I think I'm doing ?"
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.235.71.195 (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funny Anecdote 

message: DOCTOR is not a mode, but a script. Editing without , e.g., reading "Computer Power and Human Reason" may be sloppy.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.57.61.235 (talk) 05:34, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  More confusion about script 

message: This para in the head is a bit confused.
When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, responding to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?" The response to "My mother hates me" would be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was implemented using simple pattern matching techniques, but was taken seriously by several of its users, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked. It was one of the first chatterbots in existence.
"Why do you say your head hurts?" when presented with "My head hurts" is, believe it or not, one of the more complicated responses, as it requires replacement of "My" with "Your".
A true "generic response" was the phrase: "Come, come.  Elucidate your thoughts". 202.159.164.252 (talk) 20:11, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  There's something wrong with the head to do with "generic statements" 

message: At the top of this talk page it says that the ELIZA article is classified under both WikiProjects Computing and WikiProjects Linguistics. There is no section in the article addressing Weizenbaum's use of linguistics in the programming, but it's a pretty major part of how ELIZA functioned (see his 1966 Computational Linguistics paper on the topic). Should a linguistics section be added? I have some trouble fully comprehending his description of the programming, and I'm not sure how much of his description  should be included, but it seems relevant and important as a study of linguistics.
Also Linguistics is not included in the "Categories" section.
Davisagnes97 (talk) 03:19, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: A linguistics section in the article

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: From the Overview:
 Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, was created to provide a ‘parody’ of “the responses of a non-directional psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview ”
I don't see that quote in the cited source.
--Undomelin (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can't find quote in source. 

message: This article makes mention of it but the only citation leads to a paper that you have to buy in order to see (so I can't even confirm that it's in there at all).
I don't care about what format it's in or anything.  I have DOCTOR already but I cannot find STUDENT anywhere.  I don't know any examples from that script to search for, either.
Anybody know where a copy of the STUDENT script can be found?
68.189.139.242 (talk) 06:47, 22 August 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where can I find the STUDENT script? 

message: I agree that citation is needed for "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". Or at least specifically for that being the goal. Because according to other citation, one goal was to "demonstrate that the communication between man and machine was superficial"  (Epstein, J; Klinkenberg, W.D (2001)). Or are those necessarily the same thing? Quite (talk) 11:54, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I suggest quoting it out for now. - Seazzy (talk) 12:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human-human interaction" 

message: The text in the image says "Described by Joseph Weizenbaum, implementation by Norbert Landsteiner". I think this is misleading, because it suggests that Weizenbaum came up with a concept, and that Norbert Landsteiner did the real work. No, Weizenbaum already programmed ELIZA in 1966, even in his own developed programming language. Is there no image of the original ELIZA?
--2600:6C56:4100:7174:6835:B1FF:5998:DC3B (talk) 16:31, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It says it's a 2005 implementation, so not misleading in that way. AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 9 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's "described by" that makes it confusing. Weizenbaum already programmed it. --2600:6C56:4100:7174:64B5:E943:4666:2AC6 (talk) 15:27, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: However, it's likely that the 2005 re-implementer did not incorporate 1966 Weizenbaum computer code in his reimplementation.  That's all that means. AnonMoos (talk) 15:52, 21 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Misleading image 

message: I have trouble finding the following cited book chapter:  Neither the publisher 's nor the bookseries' website mentions a 2nd edition. The table of contents of the first edition does not contain such a chapter and a Google search doesn't find it either. Assuming it actually exists, any idea how to find it? --Matthäus Wander (talk) 15:25, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The 2nd edition just came out a month or so ago. It's listed on the site(s) you linked now. If you write the authors of the desired paper (wink wink), they can give you a copy for personal interest. (But since it's a copyrighted work, you obviously can't post it publicly.) Jshrager (talk) 03:11, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation: Finding ELIZA 

message: @Wasdart: Per your recent addition, re Clippy(t): I don't recall that Clippy did any NLP, and certainly didn't engage in conversation like ELIZA, so I don't think it is appropriate here.
(Also, although it was originally called Clippit, everyone now calls it Clippy, and the main article is called Clippy, so I'd think it would make more sense to call it Clippy here.) Jshrager (talk) 03:14, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent Clippy(t) Edit