d on interview, rather than practical tests. Could a computer hold a conversation with me and persuade me it is intelligent? Meet Eliza. Invented by Joseph Weizenbaum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and named after George Bernard Shaw’s character in Pygmalion, Eliza runs an algorithm pretending to be

owing it to detect dissent and subversion as it arises and make resistance to state power futile. Orwell’s telescreens are the prototype, and in 1976 Joseph Weizenbaum, one of the gloomiest tech prophets of all time, warned my class of graduate students not to pursue automatic speech recognition because government s

owing it to detect dissent and subversion as it arises and make resistance to state power futile. Orwell’s telescreens are the prototype, and in 1976 Joseph Weizenbaum, one of the gloomiest tech prophets of all time, warned my class of graduate students not to pursue automatic speech recognition because government s

lding - this is fine. Wonderful even. But it’s also not enough. “It happens that programming is a relatively easy craft to learn,” the MIT scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in the 1970s, as computers emerged into academic life. “Almost anyone with a reasonably ordered mind can become a good programmer with just