Inventing ELIZA

REVIEWS

“In Inventing ELIZA, a group of eight scholars (“Team ELIZA”) lovingly and painstakingly reconstruct, explain, reanimate, and place into historical context the program itself, the many surviving transcripts of the program’s use in the 1960s, and the development of subsequent chatbots… The book is a masterful contribution to the emerging discipline of software studies.”
—Science


ENDORSEMENTS

“The innovative collaboration Inventing ELIZA doesn’t just shed light on the famous first chatbot from the 1960s. It aims an array of thoughtful approaches at a software system of ever-increasing importance, incandescently illuminating ELIZA and connecting it to current developments. This book proves the importance of critical code studies and is an essential resource for understanding the past, present, and future of AI.”
—Nick Montfort, author of Output

“An extraordinary accomplishment in the history of computing. Inventing ELIZA couples important archival discoveries with careful materialist rigor. A crucial history of the present and essential reading for students and critics of AI.”
—Scott Richmond, author of Cinema’s Bodily Illusions

“Part software archaeology, part improv, Inventing ELIZA opens a backstage chat in which the recovered MAD-SLIP source code acts as a lively conversational partner, transforming a technological artifact fundamental to the history of AI into a compelling dialogue about conversations themselves.”
—Rita Raley, Professor of English, UC Santa Barbara