WHAT DOES ELIZA DO?
Using "'pattern matching" and substitution methodology, the
program gives canned responses that made early users feel they were
talking to someone who understood their input. The program was limited
by the scripts that were in the program. (ELIZA was originally written
in
MAD-Slip.) Many variations on the original scripts were made as amateur
coders played around with the fairly simple code.
Perhaps the most well known variation was called DOCTOR. This was made to respond like a Rogerian psychotherapist. In this instance, the therapist "reflects" on questions by turning the questions back at the patient.
ELIZA was one of the first chatterbots (later clipped to chatbot). It was also an early test case for the Turing Test, a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. By today's standards ELIZA fails very quickly if you ask it a few complex questions.
Give ELIZA a try. You can sit on your own couch and pretend it is a therapist's couch. And, as with Siri, Alexa and other operating system disembodied voices, feel free to conjure up your own idea of what ELIZA looks like.