ELIZA
It is a language analysis program. The name ELIZA was chosen because, like the Eliza of Pygmalion fame, it could be taught to 'speak' increasingly well. It needs a set of rules - a script - rather like those that might be given to an actor who is to use them to improvise around a certain theme. The script which made ELIZA famous was DOCTOR, permitting it to parody the role of a Rogerian psychotherapist engaged in an initial interview with a patient. Many people (especially those who knew little or nothing about computers) insisted, after conversing with ELIZA for a time, that the machine really understood them.
ELIZA was originally written in the SLIP list-processing language. We are not sure about the origin of the present Pascal version. Its psychotherapist script is certainly not as sophisticated as the original DOCTOR (see the example of a conversation in Weizenbaum's book).
The text above was paraphrased from Weizenbaum's book 'Computer Power and Human Reason', Freeman 1976.
The FreePascal source of ELIZA is available for download.
Picture: Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Pygmalion et Galatée, 1819, Louvre/Paris
rev June, 2017
