Today in Technology History

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January 8

Today is the eightieth birthday of the computer scientist who made the first computer program capable of holding a simple conversation in English.

Joseph Weizenbaum was born on January 8, 1923 in Berlin. His Jewish family left Hitler's Germany in 1936 -- moving to America, where Weizenbaum studied mathematics. During the 1950s, he worked on computers for General Electric, and in 1963, he took a position at M.I.T.

For the next few years, Weizenbaum worked on a computer program that could respond in English to someone typing in English. A person interacting with the program wouldn't have to know any computer language, but could just write normal sentences. Weizenbaum named the program "ELIZA," after the character of Eliza Doolittle who learned proper English in the play "Pygmalion" and the musical "My Fair Lady."

ELIZA's conversational skills were, in essence, a trick: certain key words and phrases were programmed to trigger appropriate responses. The computer program of course didn't really understand the meaning of what was being said, so a dialogue with ELIZA would usually include strange non sequiturs.

Yet sometimes, the results were uncannily human-like. There was a kind of psychoanalysis popular in the 1960s, "Rogerian analysis," in which a psychiatrist would ask questions only based on what the patient said. Those conversations could go in maddening circles, and ELIZA was especially good at them -- good enough that several practicing psychiatrists approached Weizenbaum to see if ELIZA could be used as a psychiatric tool. Even Weizenbaum's own secretary, who had watched him working on the program for months, became so engrossed in a personal conversation with the program that she asked Weizenbaum to leave the room for the sake of her privacy.

Despite his accomplishment with ELIZA, Weizenbaum was never a thoughtless booster of technology. He has always been skeptical about artificial intelligence. And in the 1980s, he was a leading critic of the rush to bring computers to the classroom. He has written about the ethics of science, and he disapproves of those who believe that technology can solve every problem.

Related links:

• Click here for Joseph Weizenbaum's homepage.

• Click here to read more about ELIZA and other "chatterbot" programs.

• Click here to read a 1985 interview with Weizenbaum, in which he discusses technology, computers, education and ethics.

• Professor Weizenbaum was also among the first to write about how some computer programmers become too engrossed in their work; for them, he coined the term "compulsive programmers."

• Many new conversational computer programs have appeared in the decades since ELIZA was created. Among the most remarkable in recent years has been ALICE. Use these links to have a conversation with ALICE, to visit the ALICE homepage, or to read a recent article about ALICE's creator.

• Click here to read Weizenbaum's original 1966 article describing ELIZA.

 

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