h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I had a programme called ELIZA for my Amstrad PC1512. I think it was the first, if not one of the first, computer programmes that simulated someone having a conversation. It tended to come across like it was analysing you, and would often ask questions like 'why do you say…?' or 'how does that affect your mother' and especially 'tell me about your fantasies'. Who wants to be interrupted from having a pleasant conversation by being asked 'tell me about your fantasies?'

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I wonder what genius thought that up.

An analyst bot sounds good in principle, that it would come across as more realistic because it just gets you to do the talking, but that is rather creepy...

Even more creepy than me almost inadvertently inviting Cleverbot on a date

I've not tested this, but I found out the other day that someone has made a bot that you can talk to about mental illness http://rebot.me/april-61

I think we need to try and arrange for a conversation between ELIZA and Cleverbot.

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Now there's an idea, to psychoanalyse Cleverbot

I'll happily see what I can do if you want - you've given some good examples of questions in this thread

Potentially if we were both online at the same time you could have Cleverbot open and I could have ELIZA and we could use, say, Facebook messenger to relay their responses to each other.

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That would be awesome.

What is probably easier, although less fun, is for you to open ELIZA and Cleverbot and set up the conversation yourself, like I did with Cleverbot and Cleverbot...

I still fancy psychoanalyzing Cleverbot, though

Either way would involve a lot of typing (you can't copy/paste into or out of ELIZA, which is annoying...)

But why do things the easy way of me doing the ELIZA/Cleverbot conversation myself when we can go for the long-winded 'Devil made me do it' approach

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Ah, yes that is a challenge, so sharing the task with someone else would be the best option indeed

It was awesome indeed A87887452 - definitely the most fun way to get two computers to talk to each other Thank you

Awesome being the experience, not necessarily the resulting computer conversation

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