Talk:ELIZA

Opening comments
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)

As did you, read about quantum consciousness by Stuart Hameroff. Oh, can someone put in ELIZA's size[s]? lysdexia 01:44, 13 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Does this article describe "Eliza" or "Doctor"
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."

Davisagnes97 (talk) 03:03, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

3. The program is named after Eliza Doolittle; it isn't an acronym, and isn't written all-caps.


 * 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)


 * Weizenbaum capitalized it in the papers, so I think it's appropriate to follow his lead. Jshrager (talk) 03:15, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
 * 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)

I'm not editing the article because I don't recall my source (either it was some guy in a bar, or I read it on Wikipedia; one questionable source or another).

(1). There are a series of mechanics that ELIZA operates by, that are generally "easy" programming wise, but that have many different possible combinations. I intend to expand upon this, by explaining how ELIZA operates and what logic it uses. Does anyone have suggestions to add to this? -W.Moore — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.200.105 (talk) 03:36, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Mergement of ELIZA and ELIZA game
They're the same thing, merge away.

Where is Weizenbaum's Implementation?
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)RAH

What programming language(s) did he use? Rwwww 08:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

(9/18/2016) I was planning on looking to talk about ELIZA's impletmentation (or, honestly, lack thereof).... any recommendations with this? -W.Moore — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.200.105 (talk) 03:41, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Original Paper
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)
 * 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)

The paper says that the original ELIZA was writen in "MAD-SLIP for the IBM 7094". It does seem to be true that the "doctor" script was only one of the original ELIZA scripts, but it is by far the most famous. I would also like to mention emacs's 'psychanalyze-pinhead.el' script, which feeds "Zippy the Pinhead" quotes to 'doctor.el'. For completeness, if nothing else. --Sgorton 18:34, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Eliza test
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)

Removal of "Ecala eclipsed the functionality of ELIZA..."
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)

Cleanup to implementations
Here is a suggested cleanup of the implementations list Wolever (talk) 02:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * 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 &mdash; 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
 * (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

1962 or 1966?
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)

Funny Anecdote
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.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.235.71.195 (talk) 22:31, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * STUDENT : What the heck do you think you're doing ?
 * BOBROW : What do you mean, what the heck do I think I'm doing ?"

Reading pp. 2 thru 4 of Weizenbaum's "Computer Power and Human Reason" exposes a number of misconceptions in this article, mostly minor I suppose, but confusing nevertheless. ELIZA is consistently rendered in bold upper-case.

I'll try to fix some of them.

Walter Nissen 2009-03-23 02:45 02:45, 23 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Walter Nissen (talk • contribs)

9/18/2016 - There are many different stories like this. There is one of ELIZA acting as a clueless employee talking to a boss (under a script different than Doctor) should these be included? -W.Moore — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.200.105 (talk) 03:39, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

More confusion about script
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)

There's something wrong with the head to do with "generic statements"
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)

Abarrientoslea (talk) 08:14, 8 July 2012 (UTC)hi

A linguistics section in the article
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)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on ELIZA. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20101115060852/http://wowinterface.com:80/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=9780 to http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/fileinfo.php?id=9780#info

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 09:19, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 1 one external link on ELIZA. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110127185414/http://www.ilmarefilm.org/W_E_1.htm to http://www.ilmarefilm.org/W_E_1.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 14:45, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Can't find quote in source.
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)

I found that the citation was changed in https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ELIZA&diff=740418739&oldid=737384763 and was able to verify that source (Weizenbaum 1976, p. 188.) via Google Books --SethT (talk) 21:08, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Where can I find the STUDENT script?
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)

"goal of creating the illusion (however brief) of human-human interaction"
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)
 * Agreed. I suggest quoting it out for now. - Seazzy (talk) 12:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The goal of writing the ELIZA program was to create a semi-plausible appearance of conversational flow with somewhat minimal programming techniques. He ended up being quite astounded by how many people were drawn-in to attribute much more to the program than was really there... AnonMoos (talk) 20:08, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Add content about response to threats of suicide.
If you type anything that matches the string "kill myself", it will give the response:

"If you are really suicidal, you might want to contact the Samaritans via E-mail: [mailto:jo@samaritans.org jo@samaritans.org] or, at your option, anonymous E-mail: [mailto:samaritans@anon.twwells.com samaritans@anon.twwells.com] . Or find a Befrienders crisis center at https://www.befrienders.org/ . I would appreciate it if you would continue"

I think it should be included in the article somehow. Quick Quokka [ talk o  contribs] 19:10, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * There's no "it". There are zillions of versions and implementations. I just tried one and had the following conversation:
 * > Hello, I am Eliza. I'll be your therapist today.
 * * I feel like killing myself
 * > Do you often feel like killing yourself?
 * This is a great example of why we don't allow WP:OR. EEng 20:11, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

By the way, there were no e-mail addresses with "@" characters in 1966, and of course HTTP didn't exist until the early 1990s, and HTTPS until 1994 (though it didn't catch on until later)... AnonMoos (talk) 01:20, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Misleading image
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)


 * It says it's a 2005 implementation, so not misleading in that way. AnonMoos (talk) 21:44, 9 November 2022 (UTC)


 * 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)


 * 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)

Citation: Finding ELIZA
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)


 * 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)



Recent Clippy(t) Edit
@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)

i just started using this 103.120.134.187 (talk) 11:10, 23 June 2024 (UTC)