Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 80.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2026-07-01 22:58:19+00:00
        From: David Berry <D.M.Berry@sussex.ac.uk>
        Subject: Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI

Dear all,

Our new co-authored book on the ELIZA chatbot might be of interest to the
Humanist list. It is called "Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the
Future of AI". It was a long haul working through the history and technical
details of a complex software artefact with a truly multidisciplinary
international team of people. We discovered the actual MAD-SLIP source code for
ELIZA in the MIT archives in 2021, and part of the book is dedicated to a close
reading of the code and its technical achievements.

The MIT Press blurb is:

Inventing ELIZA: How the First Chatbot Shaped the Future of AI
————————————————————————————

How the original ELIZA chatbot transformed ideas about AI and society’s response
to them.

As we reach the 60th anniversary of ELIZA’s public debut, Inventing ELIZA offers
the first comprehensive critical analysis of Joseph Weizenbaum’s groundbreaking
chatbot system through the lens of critical code studies. Drawing on extensive
archival research at MIT, Stanford, and UCLA, this book presents the
rediscovered original source code of ELIZA alongside previously unseen scripts
that had been missing for decades, revealing a far more sophisticated system
than previously documented. Sarah Ciston, David Berry, Anthony Hay, Mark Marino,
Peter Millican, Arthur Schwarz, Jeff Shrager, and Peggy Weil trace ELIZA’s
development (1965–1968), revealing that Weizenbaum created a chatbot within a
conversational programming environment with previously unknown innovations well
ahead of its time. Through close reading of both code and paratexts, the book
reconstructs ELIZA’s conceptual evolution and situates it within the historical
context of early AI development.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262052481/inventing-eliza/

Out July 14th 2026

I hope you enjoy it!

Best

David
Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor, CBS, Denmark.
________________________________
David M. Berry
Professor of Digital Humanities
School of Media, Arts and Humanities
University of Sussex
Silverstone 316
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 8PP


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