The Intelligence Age: A History of AI

From ancient automata to modern neural networks — the story of thinking machines

75 Milestones
700+ Years of history
∞ Growing daily

Joseph Weizenbaum

ELIZA, an early natural language processing program

  • Developed ELIZA in 1966, one of the first chatbots to pass the Turing test
  • Championed the ethical use of AI and wrote 'Computer Power and Human Reason' to critique the over-reliance on computers

Joseph Weizenbaum was a German-American computer scientist and a professor at MIT. He is best known for developing ELIZA, an early natural language processing program, and for his critiques of the ethical implications of artificial intelligence.

Milestones

  • The Therapist That Was Never Alive
    The Dawn of AI Research
    The Therapist That Was Never Alive

    A simple pattern-matching program fooled people into pouring out their hearts to a machine, revealing unsettling truths about human psychology.

    1966
  • The Creator Who Turned Against His Creation
    The First AI Winter Philosophy
    The Creator Who Turned Against His Creation

    Joseph Weizenbaum published Computer Power and Human Reason, warning that his own ELIZA experiment revealed a dangerous human willingness to trust machines with intimate decisions.

    1976
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