I remember an interesting evening in IRC, 25 years back. We had our local channel and a new nickname joined. Nearly everybody knew it was a new bot one of us ha

I remember an interesting evening in IRC, 25 years back. We had our local channel and a new nickname joined. Nearly everybody knew it was a new bot one of us had scripted. One that was able to randomize through a set of fitting answers. Nothing elaborate. While a lot of us knew this not everyone did. One girl with a dragon nickname joined as she did nearly every evening. I don't remember if she approached the not or the other way around. For about one to one and a half hour we watched as she chatted up the bot. A few of us were together in the same room in a Lan party style and couldn't believe she would not realize that she was not talking to a bot. But on that evening she really had no clue. A friend of hers also moving in the same circle of people told us the next day said girl even told her about the chat with this new nickname. She only learned it was a bot when she came visiting our weekend lam session that evening. While I though it funny while watching this chat experience gave me the creeps back than as to how easily we all could be fooled by intelligently designed machines. I never forgot and while it still makes an interesting story to tell I never quite was able to shake the feeling I watched a bit of dystopian future back in the day.