From The Vergecast, this episode takes a look back at one of the earliest chapters in the history of AI. Before Alexa and Siri, there was ELIZA. The first chatbot ever was the creation of a man named Joseph Weizenbaum, who built the bot almost as a magic trick — and then couldn't believe how many people fell for it. David Berry and Mark Marino, two members of a team dedicated to restoring and understanding ELIZA, explain how Weizenbaum created the virtual conversant, why he came to regret it, and what ELIZA can teach us about life in the AI age.
0:00 Intro
01:24 90 Seconds on The Verge
03:12 Who Was Joseph Weizenbaum?
05:47 The Big Con
08:48 What ELIZA Was For
11:55 Computing In The 1960s
15:12 Why Do People Believe In Tricks?
19:07 Weizenbaum Turns Critic
26:54 The Distinction Between Calculating and Understanding
30:22 The ELIZA effect today
35:18 Making The Trick Visible
37:44 What Weizenbaum Would Think
40:02 Wrap Up
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