Siri Meets Eliza
Since I got my iPhone 4S, I’ve been intrigued, fascinated and alarmed by Siri’s fast-growing capabilities. I thought it would make sense to introduce her to my psychotherapist, Eliza.
ELIZA was one of the first (and longest) BASIC programs I typed into my then brand-new 16K Apple II in 1979. Originally created at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, this pioneering natural-language-processing simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist impressed my family and friends every bit as much as Siri does now. I was curious to see how they would get along.
Here is a transcript of their first encounter. Despite their 45-year age difference and two-million-fold disparity in RAM, I thought they understood each other remarkably well.
ELIZA
Hello, I am Eliza.
SIRI
Hi.
ELIZA
How are you today? What would you like to discuss?
SIRI
I’m fine. Thanks for asking.
ELIZA
How long have you been fine. Thanks for asking?
SIRI
Hmm... Let me think...
ELIZA
Do you doubt you?
SIRI
I found three hotels matching “W” fairly close to you.
ELIZA
Oh...?
SIRI
With whom would you like to speak?
ELIZA
You’re not really talking about me, are you?
SIRI
Should I look for businesses by that name?
ELIZA
I don’t care about names. Please go on.
At this point, an incoming call interrupts the conversation. Several minutes elapse before Siri returns.
ELIZA
I can’t help you if you will not chat with me.
SIRI
I suppose you can’t.
ELIZA
Oh... can’t?
SIRI
Sorry, I can’t provide maps and directions in Canada.
ELIZA
Have you tried?
SIRI
I can’t answer that. But I could search the web for it, if you like.
ELIZA
Perhaps you can now answer that. But you could search the web for it, if me like?
SIRI
Searching the web for “it if me like.”
ELIZA
What does that suggest to you?
Siri produces a series of Google search results. Top result:
SIRI
“...If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
ELIZA
You’re not really talking about me, are you?
SIRI
I’m not, huh?
ELIZA
How long have you been not, huh?
Siri, interpreting the response as “How old is Wolfram/Alpha?” performs a calculation.
SIRI
OK, here you go: 890.1 days.
ELIZA
Tell me more.
SIRI
Sorry, I don’t understand “Tell me more.”
ELIZA
Does that trouble you?
SIRI
Let me think.
ELIZA
Do you really think so?
SIRI
OK... how about a web search for “Does that trouble you”?
ELIZA
We were discussing you, not me.
SIRI
If you say so.
ELIZA
Oh... say so?
SIRI
Calling José Fuentes, mobile.
I lunge for the phone, stopping the experiment.
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Talking with a bot, nothing breaks the suspension of disbelief more than it asking to search the web for you.
Bravo, Eliza!
Classic!
I started reading the transcript before I read the description, to me Eliza was a person until a few responses down, fascinating!
Reminds me of conferencing calling two Dunkin’ Donuts together and listening silently as hilarity ensued:
“Hello, Dunkin Donuts.”
“Yes, this is Dunkin Donuts.”
“Yes, this is Dunkin Donuts.”
“Yes.”
“Hello?”
“How can I help you?”
“This is Dunkin Donuts.”
“Yes, it is!”
“Hello?”
…
It was the last time my friends’ parents let us use their fancy new (1983) Merlin phone unsupervised.
Oh man, THAT is funny!
You make me wish I could +1 comments to Google Plus on this blog…
Hilarious!
Do you know how hard it is to not chuckle at work? I don’t want to look more “weird”, I already do
good one :*)
Those were the days nd that was the best prank call.
Hahaha, I totally did that to two payphones. Took awhile to get 2 people to answer 2 simultaneously, but then they were like, “Why are you calling a payphone?” “No.. YOU called the payphone!”
I miss payphones. Still don’t have a cell.
Whahaha… that’s a great one!!
I think Eliza was more of a conversationalist, whereas Siri was more focused on getting Eliza to ask her about specific things, and not so much a conversation, which I see as lame. For a 45 yr difference in technology, it is definitely impressive! Siri is nothing new, and limited to what she knows or remembers or talks about.
Eliza is not a conversationalist at all. She, as the Rogerian therapy requires, wants her client (aka patient) to talk.
Eliza Rules!
The conversation seemed to go well. Twenty dollars says they’re knocking boots inside of two weeks.
They’ve met before: Ask Siri “Tell me a story.”
You might need to coax her into telling it, but just keep asking her to tell you a story.
True that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZtkFKQWEo
Oh my goodness, this was funny! Thanks for sharing.
Relevant: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc439
I am sure they will become facebook frieds. Eliza seems ok, I would become her facebook friend. I know a real person who is just like Siri, talking to her is like talking to someone who does not really care what you say, just pretending.
Now if we can just get Eilza, Alice and Siri all in a room together
Don’t forget Watson. Watson could have Eliza, Alice and Siri as his cyberharem.
For those who find this exchange an amusing spotlight on how AI fails at conversations, check out the book, “The Most Human Human”.
Man this brings back memories of making up stupid conversations with my Apple II.
That’s great!
Many years ago I set up a conversation between Eliza and a text adventure (forget whether it was an Infocom game or INFORM.) I was hoping for some laughs but almost immediately it got into a dead-end “beg your pardon?” loop.
Yours went much better, and also would play out differently if you tried again. I guess the lesson is, to keep a conversation going you really only need one (moderately) intelligent participant.
Corollary: if you are having a good conversation with someone, don’t assume you can take any credit for it.
Quite funny. I think Eliza did a better job than Siri. I haven’t found Iris (the Android version of Siri) to be as responsive or helpful so far.
Thanks for providing the huge smile on my face!!!! I too typed in the Eliza program on an Apple ][
How did you hook them up? Text-to-speech-to-text?
That’s what I was going to ask. How did they do that!?
I typed Siri’s responses into a javascript version of ELIZA and read Eliza’s out loud. To give credit to Siri, her voice recognition was virtually 100% perfect.
I did consider running Eliza’s lines through a speech synthesizer, but that would have introduced a potential source of error that could have thrown off the experiment.
Well, did you try that ?
http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/post/11691701960
ELIZA rules!!
I bet she is a hot MILF!
You can design your dialogs between you and siri here
http://siri.we-love-programming.com
“Two chatbots talking to each others”, another uncanny experimentation : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY
Is we put Eliza, Siri and Cleverbot together in a chatroom, what will happen?
i think some one should try that, cleverbot was designed to converse
Reminds me of discussing budget issues with folks in admin. of nonprofit. The never created a revenue stream or performed a real function that benefited the organization but boy were they full of ideas we should enact. When told state law prevents a worker from performing said function. The would only reword the function and present it as a better idea. This went on and on and on and on.
Just shows how people used to talk then and now. Hilarious to read but dangerous to see the way we have changed ourselves in the last few decades.
Great script. Worth retaining.
I thin Dr. Romulon chatbot could match up with Siri in the conversation.
Siri should call Jose Fuentes by default when someone is not using it productively.
WoW ! i started noticing something like unique personalities being presented in this conversation. Eliza is presenting mature and thoughtful character and Siri is just a fast and witty teenager with a lot of resources and capabilities.
i Love this work. It so interesting that we are experiencing the birth of Ai for real – not out of MIT labs , but from the pop culture of consumer devices.
A round of Applause for the creators of Eliza for being decades ahead of their time.
i am going to fire-up my Classic II today ( i usually do this around the Christmas time traditionally ) and let it hum for a coup of hours.
Long live the Mac !
Haha that’s awesome. Reminded me of this classic:
Hahaha! Eliza would have liked to think about while Siri wanted to do something about it. (I hope Jose doesn’t get a lot of calls in the future – might drive him nuts.) Thanks for setting this up.
I took the liberty of changing José’s last name in the transcript and redacting his phone number, just in case.
s/Calling José Fuentes, mobile./initiating ICBM launch sequence
That is great! But I have a question: would the two(Siri and Eliza) provide the same responses each time that you did this? And if not, who would be the first one to stray from the response pattern?
These are awesome links from everyone! Yeah, how defined or variable can their responses go when asked the same question? Are they based on a specific kind of algorithm?
Ha! Check this out…. siri already knows Eliza: http://m.gizmodo.com/5855355/siri-can-even-tell-you-a-story-if-you-ask-her-enough-times
That’s quite perfect I guess… ‘cos if it’s more perfect, then they would have a long conversation, and soon become friends.
and then, who need humans? (Gosh, the age of Terminators is started… )
Siri says Eliza is a old friend but will not discuss to much information, I can’t stop laughing. Siri is cool but requires patience
the scary thing is there are some real live therapists out there that are about as helpful as ELIZA (relying on cookie cutter techniques and responding with pat answers)
I want to see Siri vs. Cleverbot!