Before Siri and Alexa, there was ELIZA

Emma Goldman
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2019–2025
YouTube
155K views · 9 years ago · explainer · historical

A short clip about ELIZA, the 1960s chatbot built at MIT that answers by reflecting a user's words back. It shows a conversation with the program and how shallow its understanding is.

HN people share it as a short, clear demonstration of how ELIZA works and why its apparent understanding is superficial.

“Here is a beautiful 2 minute clip demonstrating this point and Eliza itself”
AI & conversational interfacesHCI pioneers & visionary demos
#eliza#chatbot#conversationalinterface#aihistory#turingtest

3 comments from Hacker News

C
@ColinWright2025 · in “Before Siri and Alexa, there was ELIZA [video]”
Submitted the video to Hacker News.
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t
@throwaway4good2023 · in “Is the Turing Test Dead?”
Here is a beautiful 2 minute clip demonstrating this point and Eliza itself: Before Siri and Alexa, there was ELIZA ▶ this video ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program created from 1964 to 1966 at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to demonstrate the superficiality of communication between man and machine, Eliza simulated conversation by using a 'pattern matching' and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no built in framework for contextualising events.
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a
@abrax31412019 · in “Ask HN: Where does this Eliza clip come from?”
I’m trying to help someone in the EU who is making a documentary about Eliza, source this clip: ▶ this video Anyone have any ideas on how to find out where it came from? TIA
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