A research team from the United States and the United Kingdom has recently successfully revived a chatbot code named ELIZA, which is considered to be the first electronic chatbot in history. According to their paper published on the arXiv preprint server, this code was originally written by the late MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s.
In 2021, an archivist at MIT named Myles Crowley discovered printed copies of this code in a box containing Weizenbaum's personal belongings. After further review, these codes were confirmed to be the original code of ELIZA. At that time, the term "chatbot" had not yet been coined, and Weizenbaum likely viewed this program as a type of electronic therapist. ELIZA was designed as a request/response tool, where users could ask questions, and the system would respond with simple answers and follow-up questions, creating an interaction similar to a conversation with a human therapist.
Although the original ELIZA code was historically thought to be lost, some other versions of ELIZA written by different programmers still exist. The program was written in the Lisp programming language, initially running on ARPAnet, and gradually spread to home computers, becoming a "friend" to technology enthusiasts.
After discovering this code, the research team set out to make it operational. First, they needed to develop an operating environment, as ELIZA was written for a now-defunct operating system. The research team also found that the code needed cleaning, and in some cases, they had to write functions that were not included in the original code.
Ultimately, the research team successfully ran the program last December. They operated it as a request/response tool, as originally designed, and found its performance exceeded their expectations. While it cannot be compared to modern large language models, they found the revival process to be fascinating.
However, they also discovered a significant bug: if a user inputs a number, the program crashes. But for the sake of maintaining authenticity, the research team chose to keep this bug. They believe that ELIZA is an important milestone in computer history, as it represents the first known electronic chatbot.
Key Points:
🗨️ ELIZA is the first electronic chatbot, with its code written by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s.
💻 The research team successfully revived this code and made it operational, despite having to resolve some technical issues.
📜 ELIZA holds significant importance in computer history and is considered a pioneer of chatbots.
