Researchers discovered long-lost computer code and used it to resurrect the early chatbot ELIZA.

Scientists have just resurrected “ELIZA,” the world’s first chatbot, from long-lost computer code — and it still works extremely well.

Using dusty printouts from MIT archives, these “software archaeologists” discovered defunct code that had been lost for 60 years and brought it back to life.

  • Dasus@lemmy.world
    7·
    2 days ago

    I tried it a fair bit and it seemed to just give vague questions as answers. I wondered why but it was essentially modeled to play a psychiatrist in terms of the sort of language one might use,

    So if you write “unhappy” or smth it’ll goe “why are you unhappy” /“did you come to me because you’re unhappy” etc.

    Very simple ofc but would’ve been impressive 60y ago.

    If you input *help you’ll see commands and *cacm repeats the ELIZA / DOCTOR conversation from the original paper so you can sort of see what it’s capable of when the writer knows pretty much exactly what to prompt. (There’s still some variance in but eh…)