> Eliza is not comparable to GPT because it does not even hold up to very superficial scrutiny; its not really capable of even pretending to intelligently exchange information with the user, it just relies on some psychological tricks to somewhat keep a "conversation" going...

That's kinda the point I was making — tricks can get you a long way.

The comparison with GPT is not "and therefore GPT is bad" but rather "it's not necessarily as smart as it feels".

Perhaps I should've gone for "clever Hans" or "why do horoscopes convince people"?