What CIOs Should Prioritize

Elisha Riedlinger June 10, 2025

The role of the CIO has certainly seen a dramatic transformation in recent years. The threats we’re seeing today are…...

Membership Required

You must be a member to access this content.

View Membership Levels

Already a member? Log in here

Building a Better Security Analyst: What Humans Can Learn From AI

A brief history of bots

Lou Covey June 5, 2025

Bots have been around for more than half a century to automate repetitive tasks and provide services on early internet platforms. The first was ELIZA, developed as a research project in 1966 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the goal was to simulate conversations with a human being. ELIZA conversed with users, although it did not understand what the user was saying. Artificial intelligence chatbots are much more sophisticated versions of ELIZA, but still lack human comprehension.

Bots not replacements

The purpose of ELIZA was to determine if computers could replace psychoanalysts. Consequentially, it was the first time the prediction that computer could replace humans had some hard evidence. Today, there are mental-health AI applications with not much better results than ELIZA but projected to have a $8 billion market by 2032.

In 1988, the earliest broad use of bots was Internet Relay Chat (IRC) automating user list management, searches, and providing services like weather updates or game scores. But these were not known as bots at the time. They were called automations and still required a human interface to operate,

Premium Membership Required

You must be a Premium member to access this content.

Join Now

Already a member? Log in here

Membership Required

More Cybersecurity? Register for free!