In the 1960s, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum created ELIZA, a chatbot whose interactions with users established patterns that continue to shape how people engage with modern AI systems like ChatGPT, according to WIRED.
The conversations people had with ELIZA set precedents for contemporary chatbot interactions, particularly in how users share personal information and secrets with AI systems. WIRED reports that the early chatbot’s design and the human responses it elicited foreshadowed the intimate and confessional nature of conversations people now have with advanced language models.
The article draws connections between ELIZA’s impact in the 1960s and current behavior with ChatGPT, suggesting that Weizenbaum’s creation provided early insights into the psychology of human-machine communication. The chatbot’s legacy demonstrates how fundamental patterns in AI interaction were established decades before the current generation of large language models emerged.