Eliza to be more famous for immersive drama than AI
justingibbs — Fri, 2008-03-14 10:05
The father of Eliza died March 12. With the creation of Eliza, Joseph Weizenbaum practically invented the field of chatterbots and popularized AI (artificial intelligence) in the 60's. But more than that he demonstrated the capabilities of computers to be more, especially where entertainment was concerned.
Well before the advent of multimedia, there was a moment in the history of the computer that demonstrated its representational and narrative power with the same startling immediacy as the Lumieres ' train did for the motion picture camera. This is the famous but often misunderstood moment in which the first completely computer-based character was created.
- Janet H. Murray from Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace
While presently Weizenbaum's Eliza is more credited with sparking AI, over the next few years I believe it will be seen more as the central building block of immersive drama. Eliza's ability to create an illusion will prove more fundamental and long lasting to entertainment than AI.
In fact, the responsiveness of the conversation was an illusion, because Eliza was programmed simply to respond to certain key words and phrases.
