Evidence-based assessment/Back to the Future

Back to the Future
This section is a sandbox for gathering links to ideas and resources that were ahead of their time when they were first introduced, but which may be worth remembering and revisiting now or in the near future.

AI Doing Therapy?
Artificial intelligence can also deliver therapy. The ELIZA program, an early example from the first decades of AI research, provided startlingly engaging nondirective therapy decades ago (Weizenbaum, 1984). Current versions would obviously be more flexible and powerful, and future systems yet more so (Lucas, Gratch, King, & Morency, 2014).

The ELIZA program was originally based on hardcoded rules which in which the computer feigns understanding of the conversation. However, ELIZA is the precursor of modern GPT-based chatbots. An example of a modern GPT-based chatbot based on the same Rogerian therapy is a teddy bear AI, Broken Bear, which is a modern ELIZA.