It was a large program for the day, written in SNOBOL (A Bell Labs invention) and frankly, pretty brain dead.

The line Are you interested in that subject seemed to be the response for 1 out of 5 inputs. The best response came when entering a line that mentioned "girlfriend" and "sex" that prompted .. does your mother know about this ?

From the NYT obit (3-13-08):

[Eliza] made it possible for a person typing in plain English at a computer terminal to interact with a machine in a semblance of a normal conversation. To dispense with the need for a large real-world database of information, the software parodied the part of a Rogerian therapist, frequently reframing a client’s statements as questions

In fact, the responsiveness of the conversation was an illusion, because Eliza was programmed simply to respond to certain key words and phrases. That would lead to wild non sequiturs and bizarre detours, but Mr. Weizenbaum later said that he was stunned to discover that his students and others became deeply engrossed in conversations with the program, occasionally revealing intimate personal details.

“It was amazing the extent that people did not understand they were talking to a computer,” said Robert Fano, emeritus professor of electrical engineering and computer science at M.I.T. In the wake of the creation of Eliza, which was described in a technical paper in January 1966, a group of M.I.T. scientists, including Claude Shannon, a pioneer in the field of cybernetics, met in Concord, Mass., to discuss the social implications of the phenomenon, Mr. Fano said.

The seductiveness of the conversations alarmed Mr. Weizenbaum, who came to believe that an obsessive reliance on technology was indicative of a moral failing in society, an observation rooted in his experiences as a child growing up in Nazi Germany.

Perhaps these two Dutch psychologists can use this machine on those Dutch medical doctors to see why (in the spirit of the Nazies) many of them have decided it's okay to secretly chose which infirmed patients will die next?

Perhaps these two Dutch psychologists can use this machine on those Dutch leaders and citizens who have no problem approving open homosexual behavior in public parks?

This just proves that man's failure is not in the scientific area, but in the social and moral.