Dear colleagues,
The deadline for our Special Issue on the 60th anniversary of ELIZA, the chatbot introduced to the public by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966, is approaching. There is one week left to submit an abstract until November 17, 2025.
With this Special Issue, we aim to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives that examine ELIZA's historical, technical, and societal significance, while reflecting on its legacy for current and future developments in AI. Individual submissions could cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Automating of Psychotherapy. How have psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists actually used computers and text-based programs in their work over the past few decades? What imaginaries are mobilized and produced in these applications?
- Authoring AI. What genealogies follow ELIZA, not as a psychotherapist, but as an author and co-pilot in the writing of all kinds of texts? What successes and failures have been celebrated in this history of human-machine interaction?
- Commercializing AI. How were "expert systems" and other commercial AI tools received by the industry? What changes did they bring it for employees and workers? What does AI mean for the future of work in factories and offices?
- Anthropomorphizing of AI. What does the humanization of chatbots and other computer programs mean for our perception of AI? How does it shape our expectations of such technologies? How does it affect our image of humans?
- Mythologization of AI. How have AI myths developed since the 1950s? Why are dystopian accounts of AI so particularly successful? Why do we listen to the developers of AI when it comes to critically assessing the technologies they have helped build?
- Gendering of AI. How has the gendering of AI, robots, and chatbots evolved since ELIZA? What can we learn about our society from it? What impact does it have on the use and social consequences of such technologies?
Key Dates
- Abstract submission deadline: November 17, 2025
- Invitation of full papers: December 1, 2025
- Full Paper submission deadline: April 6, 2026
- Notification of acceptance and reviews available: July 6, 2026
- Paper revision deadline: October 5, 2026
- Issue release: November–December 2026
We would highly appreciate it if you would consider submitting suitable work and/or forwarding the Call for Papers to interested colleagues.
Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Christian Strippel
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Christian Strippel
Weizenbaum Institute
Berlin
Germany
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