It all started with Eliza Doolittle. I’m not speaking about my fondness for musicals, I’m referring to the birth of “chatbots.” ELIZA was the name of a program considered to be the world’s first ...

MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum developed Eliza in the mid-1960s. His views on artificial intelligence were often at odds with many of his fellow pioneers in the field. Illustration by Meilan Solly / ...