99% Invisible

99% Invisible

The ELIZA Effect

December 11, 201945 min

0:0045:25

About this episode

Throughout Joseph Weizenbaum's life, he liked to tell this story about a computer program he’d created back in the 1960s as a professor at MIT. It was a simple chatbot named ELIZA that could interact with users in a typed conversation. As he enlisted people to try it out, Weizenbaum saw similar reactions again and again -- people were entranced by the program. They would reveal very intimate details about their lives. It was as if they’d just been waiting for someone (or something) to ask. ELIZA

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99% Invisible

Design is everywhere in our lives, perhaps most importantly in the places where we've just stopped noticing. A weekly exploration of the process and power of design and architecture.

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