Meet My Therapist- ELIZA
ELIZA, a computer program created in the 1960s, was one of the first programs designed to have a conversation with people.
ELIZA would respond to what you said by using patterns and rules, making it seem like she understood you. One famous version of ELIZA acted like a therapist, where she'd often just repeat what you said back to you, which made some people feel like they were talking to a real person.
Exercise: Simulating a Conversation with ELIZA
In this exercise, you'll chat with ELIZA and observe how it uses pattern matching and rules to respond to you. Then you'll try to figure out the "rules" ELIZA follows by providing specific inputs and analyzing the outputs.
Use the following link to experiment with an ELIZA-like Therapist Bot(opens in a new tab), provided by Ant & Max Hay.
Pattern Matching is like a game of recognizing words or phrases and linking them to responses.
Rules-based Systems are a set of instructions that tell ELIZA what to say when it recognizes certain patterns.
Step 1 - Meet ELIZA
Go to the link(opens in a new tab) for an ELIZA simulation.
Begin the conversation with a simple greeting like "Hello, ELIZA."
Step 2 - Chat and Observe
Continue the conversation with ELIZA using various phrases:
Share a feeling: "I feel happy today."
Ask a question: "What should I do now?"
Make a statement: "I am worried about my exams."
Note how ELIZA responds to each type of input.
Step 3 - Detect Patterns
Look at ELIZA's responses and think about why it might have said what it did.