DOCTOR, computer program in ELIZA

DOCTOR, computer program in ELIZA. Developed at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966.

"ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction." DOCTOR is a real-world referent with "Omm," in the psychiatry-booth scenes in the film THX-1138 and (according to the Wikipedia entry on ELIZA) in a 1980 game based on the TV show The Prisoner. DOCTOR is discussed with his usual insight and sense of humor by Carl Sagan in The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence (New York: Ballantine, 1977: 217-20, ch. 8).