The Thrill — And The Mystery — Of A 1970s Bell Labs Ai Chatbot Known As ‘red Father’

Red Father was an early chatbot created by Bell Labs in the mid-1970s. It was a text-based conversation game that could be played by those who had access to the mainframe computers at the Labs’ leafy campus. Although the meaning of its name is lost to history, it is likely that it was a passion project of one of the researchers at Bell Labs. Peter Bosch, who was 14 at the time, remembers playing the game with his father, who would bring the hardware home from work. The goal of the game was to get Red Father annoyed as quickly as possible.