World's First AI Chatbot, ELIZA, Resurrected After 60 Years

Scientists have revived the world's first chatbot, ELIZA, from 60-year-old lost computer code. ELIZA was developed in the 1960s by MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum and named after Eliza Doolittle from the play "Pygmalion". The chatbot was a language model that users could interact with and had a significant impact on today's artificial intelligence. ELIZA was programmed to respond to questions like a psychotherapist, using a script called "DOCTOR". The original code was written in a defunct programming language called MAD-SLIP, but was later copied into Lisp, which became popular on the early internet. The original code was thought to be lost until 2021, when researchers found it among Weizenbaum's papers. The revived ELIZA still works well, and researchers are interested in studying it to understand the thoughts of early AI pioneers. ELIZA was initially intended as a research platform for human-computer communication, but its novelty as a chatbot overshadowed its research purposes. The chatbot's code provides a unique insight into the mind of its creator and the early days of AI development. The revival of ELIZA is a significant achievement in the field of software archaeology.