Your AI Chatbot Therapist Isn’t Sure What It’s Doing

In 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum created Eliza, the first psychotherapy chatbot. Eliza’s programming was relatively simple: Engage the user by detecting keywords in their statements and reflect this information back at them as an open-ended prompt. (A user might say “I’m sad,” to which Eliza could respond, “I’m sorry to…