ELIZA's Creator Fought AI Therapy for Decades. Now It's a Thriller.

Weizenbaum's secretary asked him to leave the room so she could talk to his program in private.

This was 1966. The program was ELIZA, roughly 200 lines of code that mimicked Rogerian therapy by reflecting back whatever you typed. Weizenbaum built it to show how shallow human-computer conversation really was. His secretary didn't get the joke. She poured her heart out to it. So did others.

That reaction broke something in him. He wrote 'Computer Power and Human Reason' arguing that machines cannot provide genuine empathy or moral judgment. He became AI's loudest critic before AI had done much of anything worth criticizing.

Melbourne Theatre Company turns this into a psychological thriller. Tom Holloway's 'Eliza' runs September 28 to October 31, 2026. Dan Spielman plays Weizenbaum. Manali Datar plays Becky, the secretary. Paige Rattray directs.

But Weizenbaum wasn't arguing with empty air. Psychiatrist Kenneth Colby built PARRY in 1971 to simulate a paranoid schizophrenic patient, and he pushed for computer-based therapy as legitimate medicine. The two men feuded over whether AI belonged anywhere near mental health.

That feud is now our reality. Woebot, Wysa, and a dozen other apps deliver therapy through chat. Some users love them. Insurance companies love them more. The debate that split Weizenbaum and Colby in the 1970s is now policy affecting millions.

The play lands in a moment when its history has caught up to us. Weizenbaum fled Nazi Germany as a boy. His warnings about technology eroding human dignity came from somewhere real, not abstract. Content warnings reference violence towards women and the Holocaust.

We know how Colby's side turned out. AI therapy is here. What we don't know is whether Weizenbaum was right to be afraid, or if AI is a tool or are you.