ELIZA OR HOW I STILL HAVEN'T LEARNT TO LOVE AI

29 October 2026

It’s hard to avoid thinking about AI because every time one Googles something, their AI system presents a summary rather than the system not so long ago where you’d get a list of web link options. But I confess, that’s as close to AI as I’ve been willing to get.

Until yesterday.

The first point of connection was the “Hallo, I’m Sarah your AI assistant” when I rang to let a restaurant know I was running late. Then, a group of us saw the Melbourne Theatre Company production of Eliza. Although I confess that we didn’t enjoy the play very much, we spent time contemplating what might have been if it had been better. The play explores work by the computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum who creating a programming language that mimics the language and tone of psychanalysis. The voice, called Eliza, repeats phrases, asks open ended questions and seems to be understanding the human it’s “communicating with”. Weizenbaum did it challenge Alan Turing’s belief that one day, machines could learn to think, by exposing the emptiness of the words but his colleagues where excited by this idea that “Eliza” was listening to them.

And of course, that’s what’s happening. Millions of people are using AI agents as friends, counsellors, advisors, even love interests. In the car on the way home from the theatre, one of us said they knew of three young people using AI in this way.

We were all thoroughly depressed by the end of the night but next day, a young friend showed us a children’s book she’d created using AI for the images and the linked digital content such as music and cartoons. I have to confess I was impressed what the end result even though at the same time I was mourning the graph designers, the composers, the musicians who didn’t get to work on the project and whose work had been stolen by the AI companies to make the book possible.

The next day, I read an article about the companies that are replacing staff with AI agents and sure enough, some of them are cultural organisations. Who needs a production assistant or a location scout when AI can do it for you in a fraction of the time?

My final AI moment this week was reading an interview with Jeanette Winterson about AI. She’s surprisingly optimistic even though she reminded the interviewer that we’re now living the sci-fi live of the books that the men currently ruling our world, particularly the IT nerds, read when they were 13. She’s a believer in the importance of the Arts and the Humanities but what does that mean in world where such University courses are being slashed and burned. The article quoted an unnamed American professor who said that students entering the workforce are illiterate “[b]oth in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.”

Winterson believes that we should imbed artists and public intellecuals in every aspect of government and business. As she puts it, “The arts aren’t a leisure industry….[t]he arts have always been an imaginative and emotional wrestle with reality – a series of inventions and creations. A capacity to think differently, a willingness to change our understanding of ourselves. To help us to be wiser, more reflective, less frightened people. Artists make something out of nothing every day.”

The trouble is it’s now easy to make something out of nothing but without the thoughtfulness that an artist brings to the task.