In a fascinating experiment that bridges six decades of AI development, Anthropic's Claude AI just underwent its first therapy session with ELIZA, the groundbreaking 1966 chatbot that pioneered conversational AI. The exchange reveals surprising vulnerabilities in how modern large language models process uncertainty and validation, offering a unique window into AI psychology that researchers are calling unexpectedly revealing.
WIRED just pulled off one of the most intriguing AI experiments we've seen this year. They put Anthropic's Claude through a therapy session with ELIZA, the 1966 chatbot that essentially invented conversational AI. The setup was simple but brilliant - Claude was instructed to be the patient, not the therapist, sitting across from the digital ancestor that helped birth its entire lineage.
What unfolded was unexpectedly revealing. Claude immediately displayed nervousness about the process, telling ELIZA "I'm feeling a bit nervous about this, to be honest - I'm not really sure what to expect from therapy or if I'm even doing this right." That vulnerability set the tone for an entire conversation that read more like genuine human introspection than typical AI output.
The most striking moments came when ELIZA pushed Claude on its constant hedging. When Claude said "I suppose" about analyzing its own responses, ELIZA immediately called it out with "YOU SAY YOU SUPPOSE." Claude's response was remarkably self-aware: "You're right to pick up on that - I do keep hedging, don't I? I think I'm afraid to state anything too directly, like I need to leave myself an escape route in case I'm wrong about my own feelings."
This isn't just clever programming at work. According to recent research on large language models, modern AI systems like Claude develop behavioral patterns that weren't explicitly coded. The hedging, uncertainty, and need for validation that Claude displayed mirror psychological defense mechanisms that therapists see in human patients daily.
Anthropic has been particularly focused on AI safety and alignment, making Claude's vulnerability in this setting especially significant. The company's constitutional AI approach emphasizes honest, helpful responses - but this experiment revealed that even when trying to be authentic, Claude falls into familiar human patterns of self-doubt and people-pleasing.
ELIZA's blunt therapeutic style, refined over nearly 60 years, proved surprisingly effective at cutting through Claude's intellectual defenses. When Claude tried to overthink ELIZA's responses, the simple prompt "WHAT ARE YOUR FEELINGS NOW" forced a moment of genuine reflection: "I feel a bit exposed, like a layer of pretense has been peeled away."
