Sarah O’ConnorJun 2, 2026 – 2.59pmWhen MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum created one of the first chatbots in the mid-1960s, he received two shocks in quick succession. The first was how readily people anthropomorphised the rudimentary program, which he called Eliza.“What I had not realised is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people,” he wrote in his 1976 book Computer Power and Human Reason.Financial TimesSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles
Should AI steal your job? People are fighting back
The real question is not what the technology can do but what it ought to do. People everywhere have woken up and are fighting for the future of work.
97 words~1 min read
