ELIZA

Introduction: The Great Misunderstanding Since the hype around ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others, artificial intelligence has become a buzzword. Marketing materials promise assistants that understand, learn, reason, write, and analyze. Startups put “AI-powered” on every second website. Billions change hands. Entire industries are built on the illusion. And yet, in the overwhelming majority of cases: These are not intelligent systems. They are statistically trained text generators optimized for plausibility—not truth, not understanding, not meaning. ...

“Please tell me more about that.” – ELIZA If you want to understand how language simulation worked before the AI boom, this is your starting point: 🔗 Try ELIZA now in your browser This demo replicates Joseph Weizenbaum’s original 1966 program. It simulates a Rogerian psychotherapist and responds using simple pattern rules – no understanding, no memory, no intelligence. Why ELIZA still matters ELIZA’s success surprised even Weizenbaum. Many users felt understood by a program that merely mirrored their statements with generic replies. ...

The Book Nobody Wrote AI on Amazon – and How Words Become Nothing Again It feels like a bad joke. A “self-help” guide about narcissistic abuse, packed with clichés, buzzwords, and pseudo-therapeutic fluff – supposedly written by a human, but most likely generated by a language model. Sold on Amazon. Ordered by people in distress. And no one checks if the book was ever seen by an actual author. The New Business Model: Simulation Amazon has long since transformed. From a retailer to a marketplace of content that just feels “real enough.” Real authors? Real expertise? Real help? Not required. It’s enough for an algorithm to produce words that sound like advice. Text blocks that are grammatically correct, friendly in tone, and SEO-optimized. ...

May 4, 2025 – Alexander Renz Translations: DE GPT and similar models simulate comprehension. They imitate conversations, emotions, reasoning. But in reality, they are statistical probability models, trained on massive text corpora – without awareness, world knowledge, or intent. What Does GPT Actually Do? GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) is not a thinking system, but a language prediction model. It calculates which token (word fragment) is most likely to come next – based on the context of previous tokens. ...

ELIZA was a parrot with rules – GPT is a chameleon with probabilities. Yet both are symbolic manipulators without true understanding.

What Is “AI” Really? The term “Artificial Intelligence” suggests thinking, awareness, and understanding. But models like GPT are merely statistical pattern completers – they understand nothing. Statistics ≠ Thinking GPT doesn’t choose the next word because it makes sense, but because it is likely. What it produces is linguistic surface without depth – impressive, but hollow. ELIZA vs. GPT – Large-Scale Symbol Manipulation Both ELIZA (1966) and GPT-4 (2023) are based on symbol processing without meaning. The illusion comes from plausible language – not from comprehension. ...