« The craze for these AI actually says a lot about our difficulty in speaking together » – Liberation

“In the mid -1960s, the first conversation robot took the form of a shrink! At that time, computer engineers began to design programs that had the capacity to respond, as in chess games. They also imagined robots capable of responding to a man. The first conversational program is called Eliza, designed on the model of the American psychologist, Carl Rogers, and known to reformulate questions – as in a caricature of a shrink. We therefore asked Eliza, who answered: « Do you really think you need advice on this subject? » Today, it is the opposite, the AIs give answers, in a learned and reassuring tone, even if the answers are not always documented, nor really very just. This is perhaps what appeals to followers of conversations with IA. What matters is this reassuring tone « I know how to answer ». And having answers in an increasingly uncertain world. We, human beings, really want that.

“We made these machines, from what Alan Turing created. Today, this pioneer of artificial intelligence would be categorized autistic Asperger. At 12, he confides in his letters that he is very uncomfortable with speech. His teachers reproach him for him and, to his friend of the college, he declares: I will invent a machine which will be my spokesperson. And he creates, in a very rigid way, with zero and one, binary computer coding.