During talk therapy one day, my psychologist said to me, “Look, the human mind is a mystery. We may never fully work things out.” For me, it was at once shocking that a psychologist was so candid about the limitations of their profession, and liberating. It allowed me to relax into the enigma of being human – the endless contradictions, complexities and obscured insights within us all.

I began to see talk therapy as an ongoing curiosity about our interiors, rather than heading toward a fixed endpoint.

That psychologist was a real human, but talk therapy from artificial intelligence is increasingly popular. As a therapist, AI provides an apparently empathetic sounding board for problems of the mind and emotions, without the awkward fact of a real human knowing who you are.

Based on a true story

Tom Holloway’s psychological thriller Eliza, in its world premiere season at Melbourne Theatre Company, arrives in this zeitgeist. By looking at the genesis of AI chat bots – specifically Eliza, the world’s first AI talk-therapy companion, invented in the 1960s – the play explores the tension between AI’s ability to help humanity, and its perils.

At the centre of the play is Joseph Weizenbaum (Dan Spielman), based on the real-life computer scientist and holocaust survivor who........

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