Who developed the foundational program ELIZA at MIT in 1966?
Answer
Joseph Weizenbaum
The foundational work in developing early conversational agents is overwhelmingly attributed to Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1966, Weizenbaum created ELIZA, which served as an experiment to demonstrate the potentially superficial nature of communication established between humans and machines. His creation predated systems designed for complex information retrieval or personalized recommendations, focusing instead on simulating dialogue capability using rudimentary linguistic techniques.

Related Questions
Who developed the foundational program ELIZA at MIT in 1966?What was Joseph Weizenbaum's initial intent for creating ELIZA?What core mechanism did the early program ELIZA utilize for generating responses?Which psychiatrist developed PARRY in the early 1970s to simulate a specific mental state?What was the primary focus of early chatbots like ELIZA compared to modern recommendation bots?What three technological ingredients were necessary for the evolution to modern recommendation chatbots?What key reaction regarding ELIZA convinced Weizenbaum he should critique AI?What underlying technology governed the responses of both ELIZA and PARRY?How do modern e-commerce bots processing a suggestion differ from ELIZA's immediate context handling?What role does the principle of using conversational language play in modern chatbot existence?