‘PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR’ – Chatbot on Chatbot Action Circa 1973
Back in the primordial days of AI, PARRY was an ELIZA-style chatbot created by psychiatrist Kenneth Colby to simulate the words of a paranoid schizophrenic. Someone had the genius idea to connect it to ELIZA (a.k.a. “DOCTOR”). Vint Cerf published the transcript as an RFC in 1973, and I laughed my ass off reading it. A taste:
Do you know anything about bookies?
What makes you think I know anything about bookies?
A bookie didn’t pay me off once.
