Long before ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and virtual assistants a simple computer program created in an MIT laboratory captivated ...

In the 1960s an MIT professor named Joseph Weizenbaum created a chatbot called ELIZA. The conversations people had with it set precedents for the chatbots to come.

While GPT-3 can string words together in convincing ways, it has no idea what the words mean. Alas, it is an illusion—a powerful illusion, but still an illusion reminiscent of the Eliza computer ...