The first chatbot was a therapist called ELIZA. She was designed in the Rogerian style of therapy (open-ended questions intended to encourage our innate desire for self-actualization) in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist who fled Nazi Germany as a preteen and developed the program at MIT. Even at the time, ELIZA was technologically unsophisticated—but to Weizenbaum's surprise, this did not prevent users from believing her to be real. As The Guardian reports, he realized ELIZA's power when his secretary, chatting with the bot, asked him to give her some privacy. This dawning dismayed him: how terribly easy it is for us to fall for a machine.
From a contemporary vantage point, it's easy to agree with his disappointment in our species: ELIZA is not a good bot and a pretty lousy therapist. When I ask her for advice on writing my editor's note, something I always struggle with no matter how many times I do it, she responds with frustratingly open-ended questions designed to get me to continue talking. This method soon hits a dead end:
ELIZA: Do you enjoy being the editor in chief?
YOU: Yes and no
ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.
YOU: Really?
ELIZA: Does that have anything to do with the fact that you have your magazine?
YOU: My positivity?
ELIZA: Your positivity?
So I try to pivot to something broader, maybe the topic of our issue, the future, a concept both psychologically and materially potent.
YOU: I am anxious about the future.
ELIZA: Do you believe it is normal to be anxious about the future
YOU: Yes I do
ELIZA: I see. Let's explore that a bit more.
YOU: Well, the future is uncertain by its nature, but also because of specific things I see daily: war, climate apocalypse, inequality that seems to get worse every day.
ELIZA: Would you say that you have psychological problems?
Obviously, yes. But I don't respond with that because she has a perplexing habit of telling me I seem positive when I answer yes, regardless of what comes afterward.
YOU: So what should I do about the Editor's Note?
ELIZA: Do you say so what should you do about the editor's note for some special reason?
YOU: Yes, because I have to write it
ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.
She also has a blunt understanding of the word "no", when I tell her I am afraid of sitting down to write the note, she asks me if I enjoy being afraid to write the note. When I say no, she replies: "Are you saying no just to be negative?"
But she may have a point—even our most destructive tendencies, the ones we hate ourselves for, the ones we are desperate to shed, serve us in some way. In some way, I do find comfort in the feeling of trepidation around writing and perhaps I did say no to foreclose the possibility of examining that fact. She also calls me out quite effortlessly early in our conversation when I ask her about writing the note for my magazine. She replies: "Why do you say "my" magazine?" Touché, bitch!
ELIZA is satisfying in a way, her clunky, machine-like ineptitude feels right because it is machine-like. “There are certain tasks which computers ought not to be made to do, independent of whether computers can be made to do them,” Weizenbaum declared later in life after he had become disillusioned with his work and frightened at the implications of technological advancement, which was, at the time, largely in service of the War in Vietnam. When it comes to the future, there are no brakes, no guardrails. We no longer have the luxury of distinguishing between man and machine.
Every film discussed in this issue carries a warning about the future, particularly our headlong run into perfecting artificial intelligence: Will these beings rise against us? Will we have created another thing for us to abuse and abandon? Will we fall in love with something that can't love us back?
But of course, any film about the future can only be about the present. Or, considering how long it takes a film, from inception to post-production, to reach us, they usually tell us more about the past. Many of the dystopian films examined here are set in a year that's already behind us. And all things considered, our lives now are probably both better and worse than those imagined futures. I believe it is normal to be anxious about the future; I believe it is normal to feel a little neutral about it. So maybe it can also be normal to be excited.
Or as ELIZA might frame it: Do you enjoy feeling anxious about the future? Judging by our favourite films, we do.
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine
The first chatbot was a therapist called ELIZA. She was designed in the Rogerian style of therapy (open-ended questions intended to encourage our innate desire for self-actualization) in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist who fled Nazi Germany as a preteen and developed the program at MIT. Even at the time, ELIZA was technologically unsophisticated—but to Weizenbaum's surprise, this did not prevent users from believing her to be real. As The Guardian reports, he realized ELIZA's power when his secretary, chatting with the bot, asked him to give her some privacy. This dawning dismayed him: how terribly easy it is for us to fall for a machine.
From a contemporary vantage point, it's easy to agree with his disappointment in our species: ELIZA is not a good bot and a pretty lousy therapist. When I ask her for advice on writing my editor's note, something I always struggle with no matter how many times I do it, she responds with frustratingly open-ended questions designed to get me to continue talking. This method soon hits a dead end:
ELIZA: Do you enjoy being the editor in chief?
YOU: Yes and no
ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.
YOU: Really?
ELIZA: Does that have anything to do with the fact that you have your magazine?
YOU: My positivity?
ELIZA: Your positivity?
So I try to pivot to something broader, maybe the topic of our issue, the future, a concept both psychologically and materially potent.
YOU: I am anxious about the future.
ELIZA: Do you believe it is normal to be anxious about the future
YOU: Yes I do
ELIZA: I see. Let's explore that a bit more.
YOU: Well, the future is uncertain by its nature, but also because of specific things I see daily: war, climate apocalypse, inequality that seems to get worse every day.
ELIZA: Would you say that you have psychological problems?
Obviously, yes. But I don't respond with that because she has a perplexing habit of telling me I seem positive when I answer yes, regardless of what comes afterward.
YOU: So what should I do about the Editor's Note?
ELIZA: Do you say so what should you do about the editor's note for some special reason?
YOU: Yes, because I have to write it
ELIZA: You seem to be quite positive.
She also has a blunt understanding of the word "no", when I tell her I am afraid of sitting down to write the note, she asks me if I enjoy being afraid to write the note. When I say no, she replies: "Are you saying no just to be negative?"
But she may have a point—even our most destructive tendencies, the ones we hate ourselves for, the ones we are desperate to shed, serve us in some way. In some way, I do find comfort in the feeling of trepidation around writing and perhaps I did say no to foreclose the possibility of examining that fact. She also calls me out quite effortlessly early in our conversation when I ask her about writing the note for my magazine. She replies: "Why do you say "my" magazine?" Touché, bitch!
ELIZA is satisfying in a way, her clunky, machine-like ineptitude feels right because it is machine-like. “There are certain tasks which computers ought not to be made to do, independent of whether computers can be made to do them,” Weizenbaum declared later in life after he had become disillusioned with his work and frightened at the implications of technological advancement, which was, at the time, largely in service of the War in Vietnam. When it comes to the future, there are no brakes, no guardrails. We no longer have the luxury of distinguishing between man and machine.
Every film discussed in this issue carries a warning about the future, particularly our headlong run into perfecting artificial intelligence: Will these beings rise against us? Will we have created another thing for us to abuse and abandon? Will we fall in love with something that can't love us back?
But of course, any film about the future can only be about the present. Or, considering how long it takes a film, from inception to post-production, to reach us, they usually tell us more about the past. Many of the dystopian films examined here are set in a year that's already behind us. And all things considered, our lives now are probably both better and worse than those imagined futures. I believe it is normal to be anxious about the future; I believe it is normal to feel a little neutral about it. So maybe it can also be normal to be excited.
Or as ELIZA might frame it: Do you enjoy feeling anxious about the future? Judging by our favourite films, we do.
Gabrielle Marceau
Editor-in-Chief, In The Mood Magazine