Programming with Python: Build a chatbot The ELIZA principle The minimal version The Full version The function answer () More ideas for forks Chatbots and language assistants are indispensable in the digital present. On online platforms, for example, bots are increasingly being used as the first point of contact for customer communication, for example when you have questions about a DSL tariff from a provider. Siri, Google Assistant & Co. provide information on voice requests about the weather for the next few days, read out the news and know the latest soccer results. Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum laid the foundations for these ubiquitous technologies (1923 – 2008) already in the 1960 years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the computer program “ELIZA” . The program responds to typed questions or sentences from a person. It uses a catalog of ready-made text fragments and tries to create an answer that is as suitable as possible.

Weizenbaum programmed the parodistic simulation of a psychologist who uses a client-centered therapy method as a “digital counterpart”. According to Weizenbaum, it was relatively easy to imitate such a role in conversation, as it is roughly shortened to get the patient to speak and reflect by asking counter questions. The source code of the original ELIZA was written in the SLIP programming language – it is now considered lost. In Weizenbaum’s publications, however, all of ELIZA’s principles are documented that are necessary for a reproduction in another programming language.

ELIZA’s “father”: Joseph Weizenbaum created the program at MIT in the 1960 years.

We programmed our reconstruction of ELIZA in Python 3.7 on the online programming platform Repl.it and named it ELIZA +. The program runs like the big model as a pure console application with keyboard input. To avoid some complications of the German language, ELIZA + understands and speaks English. We have also written the internal comments in the code in this language. For the sake of simplicity, ELIZA + ignores upper and lower case letters and only answers with lower case letters. This programming project requires a basic knowledge of Python: For example, keywords such as if , while , for , def , from and import and with functions, arguments, classes, objects and the method __ init __ () . Using selected code excerpts, the article shows how ELIZA + accepts input, interprets it and finds answers. The complete code can be found on the online programming platform Repl.it.

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