Eliza was the first software to simulate human conversation. It was developed in the mid-1960s by Joseph Weizenbaum, a computer scientist at MIT. The most famous version mimicked a psychotherapist, thus hiding its conversational incompetence: “Men are all alike.” “In what way?” “They're always bugging us about something specific or other.” “Can you think of a specific example?” “Well, my boyfriend made me come here.” “Your boyfriend made you come here?” And so on.
It was a clever program but Professor Weizenbaum, who died in 2008, was disturbed by the fact that several people seemed to find talking to Eliza genuinely therapeutic. Computers, concluded Weizenbaum, might not be terribly good for our emotional wellbeing.
These days, concern has moved to the amount of time we spend checking social networks - even if our online friends are, presumably, human beings. Two economists, John Helliwell and Haifang Huang, have been collecting the data necessary to assess whether such online friends are good for the soul. The quick answer: not really.