Is the ELIZA effect a dominant cause of GPT hype?

Article https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/25/joseph-weizenbaum-inventor-eliza-chatbot-turned-against-artificial-intelligence-ai Alt-text note "I think we need to dig into what is happening here, which is that, when faced with a system that presents itself as a listening, eager interlocutor that’s hearing us and responding to us, that we seem to fall into a kind of trance in relation to these systems, and almost counterfactually engage in some kind of wish fulfillment: thinking that they’re human, and there’s someone there listening to us. It’s like when you’re a kid, and you’re telling ghost stories, something with a lot of emotional weight, and suddenly everybody is terrified and reacting to it. And it becomes hard to disbelieve." The text of the image is taken from a superb interview with the creator of Signal (Meredith Whittaker). https://www.ifa-berlin.com/content-hub/researcher-meredith-whittaker-ais-biggest-risk-isnt-consciousness-s-corporations-control

Researcher Meredith Whittaker says AI’s biggest risk isn’t ‘consciousness’—it’s the corporations that control them

IFA Berlin 2023 - English

Weizenbaum’s nightmares: how the inventor of the first chatbot turned against AI

The Guardian