I think ELIZA should seek professional help

First of all I want to rephrase my statements in my previous entry. After reading the article written by Weizenbaum and seeing how some people reacted to the program I found it very pathetic that these people actually felt that ELIZA could replace an actual therapist. I thought it funny that it was probably these people, the ones who thought the program could be a substitute, who are paying real therapist a lot of money to help them solve their problems. I feel these people suffer from one of two symptoms. One, if a simple program is able to help solve their problems then they have a lot more problems then previously thought. Or two, they don't have any problems at all.

I can really say that after experiencing the program first hand, it is quite easy to crack the system. It just moves the participant around in a circle and doesn't really provide any answers. So I do agree with Leslie with the idea that this program would be good at diagnosis and not for actually psychoanalyzing patients. This is becasue the participant is really just psychoanalyzing them self. Human emotion is needed to sympathize and relate with a patient, something ELIZA will never have.

This also may have been a big breakthrough in the 1960's when it was written but today, as evidenced in class, the program doesn't really do anything. With this point I don't think Erika really needs to worry about programs like this taking jobs away. We are still a long ways out before we see a computer program actually be able to help a human being work its way through a difficult life situation. And until that day comes we will continue to pay therapists hundreds of dollars an hour to relate to us on a human level.