Chapter 5

ELIZA: Dialog with a Machine

It is said that to explain is to explain away.

–Joseph Weizenbaum

MIT computer scientist

This chapter and the rest of part I will examine three more well-known AI programs of the 1960s. ELIZA held a conversation with the user in which it simulated a psychotherapist. STUDENT solved word problems of the kind found in high school algebra books, and MACSYMA solved a variety of symbolic mathematical problems, including differential and integral calculus. We will develop versions of the first two programs that duplicate most of the essential features, but for the third we will implement only a tiny fraction of the original program’s capabilities.

All three programs make heavy use of a technique called pattern matching. ...

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