> I had no idea it was a parody of Rogerian counseling...

Opinions vary of the seriousness of it all. The link I provided make it sound like a right joke, but Eliza has been treated more seriously than that...

'As Weizenbaum points out, the computer's language analysis was very primitive. Its programming reflected a single context -- that of the therapeutic dialog -- and its "understanding" consisted substantially of keying in on certain words and drawing on a set of stock responses. (Of course, it also had to do some basic grammatical parsing of English text.) Nevertheless, Weizenbaum reports on the "shock" he experienced upon learning how seriously people took the program:

Once my secretary, who had watched me work on the program for many months and therefore surely knew it to be merely a computer program, started conversing with it. After only a few interchanges with it, she asked me to leave the room. Another time, I suggested I might rig the system so that I could examine all conversations anyone had with it, say, overnight. I was promptly bombarded with accusations that what I proposed amounted to spying on people's intimate thoughts .... I knew of course that people form all sorts of emotional bonds to machines .... What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people. /3/ '

So... Some people have become rather hooked on talking to Eliza. Treating it very seriously indeed. And indeed... How can therapy help you if you aren't serious about it ;-) IMO the secretary didn't have to believe Eliza was intelligent (comprehending) or form an emotional bond to Eliza - she could have been worried about the things she had said to Eliza being made available to her employer.

So... There is also stuff around just how 'delusional' one must be to consider a program to be intelligent. Typically... The problem is in considering such a *simple* program to be intelligent.

But... I don't know that anybody actually does believe the program is intelligent.

Though... Parry the paranoid program fooled three psychiatrists who judged they were conversing with a real paranoid patient ;-)

There is a joke that that tells you more about the intelligence of psychiatrists than it tells you about the intelligence of the parry program.

There has been some debate around whether the program is of theraputic utility or not...

:-)