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2006 Chatterbox Challenge In Full Swing 118

Posted by samzenpus from the are-you-real dept.
William Wynn writes "Once again chatterbots from around the world are coming together to face off in the ultimate bot competition. The 2006 Chatterbox Challenge lays host to 65 artificially intelligent programs attempting to imitate human conversation. Public voting takes place from April 1 to April 30 after which the private judging will have been finished and medals and cash prizes will be given out. Medals are awarded for "Most Popular Bot," "Best Learning Bot" and "Best New Bot" as well as $1,800 to be split among the top three bots overall. Anyone can talk to the competing chatbots through the competition website."
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2006 Chatterbox Challenge In Full Swing More

2006 Chatterbox Challenge In Full Swing

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  • bot test #1 (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:11PM (#15088584)
    last post... am I human?

  • They just started? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ingo23 ( 848315 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:14PM (#15088602)
    I thought the competition have been going on here at slashdot for a while now...

  • Eh, chatterbots. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Poromenos1 ( 830658 )
    What bugs me about these bots is that they don't know what they're talking about. Most are responding to what the user says. It's difficult to hold a conversation with such a small attention span. Even if they do hold some kind of state, they still don't know they're talking about, say "chatterbots", and that those have attributes and do actions, and so have something to say about them.
    • What bugs me about these bots is that they don't know what they're talking about. Most are responding to what the user says. It's difficult to hold a conversation with such a small attention span. Even if they do hold some kind of state, they still don't know they're talking about, say "chatterbots", and that those have attributes and do actions, and so have something to say about them.

      Sounds to me like you've come up with a winning strategy. Build a little domain knowledge into your bot, design an algorit
    • Right! Exactly! Oh, you are talking about bots? Sorry, I just remembered my last conversation with customer support.
    • then put simplicity in "booty"... Simplified conversational bot:

      (in a "femme-chanical" voice)

      "Oh, baby... yesss, put you finger on my but-ton. Dig-it-ize me...

      Oh, yess, you turn - me - on . Zap - my- ass -embly with your damaged short-thing- probe..."

      Compile your own filth to embrace and extend things here...ass u c fit...

    • Re:Eh, chatterbots. (Score:5, Funny)

      by aslate ( 675607 ) <planetexpress@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:43PM (#15088717) Homepage
      But they do know what they're talking about!

      Elbot: "Who convinced you to come visit me?"
      Me: "Slashdot"
      Elbot: "That explains all these geeks who have been visiting me."

      See!

    • Re:Eh, chatterbots. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I see. Tell me more about these bots that bug you.
    • in a speech class two years ago, myself and a classmate acted out a conversation between a bot and a human. i had found some funny logs from previous contests, and i played the computer, and she played the human. it went over horrible, no one picked up the humor of being misunderstood.
    • Hello, this is The Professor, creator of the Personality Forge. A few comments:

      There are no minimum requirements for the bots listed on the voting or contest page of the Chatterbox Challenge. Anyone can sign up. So you see a lot of bots made by enthusiastic folks that might only have been in construction for a week or a month. If you're looking for something advanced and try one of those, well, it wont hold up to your scrutiny. It takes a long time to make a good chat bot. Check the winners of past contests

  • Angry bot. (Score:5, Funny)

    by neoshroom ( 324937 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:22PM (#15088624)
    2) What are you planning to do today?
    RoboMatic X1: I CAN'T DO THIS OPERATION CAUSE I'M DEMO VERSION.
    Judge: Nevermind
    RoboMatic X1: TALKING WITH YOU BECOME EXTREMELY BORING, I NEED
    SOME FUN.
    5) Where do you call home?
    RoboMatic X1: REALLY I WAS LOOKING FOR THAT QUESTION FROM ALONG TIME
    AGO, CAN YOU FIND FOR ME THE ANSWER?
    Judge: No
    : WHY YOU DON'T TELL ME THE ANSWER?, OK FORGET IT, I DON'T WANT TO
    KNOW, SAVE CANCELLED.
    6) What do you want out of life?
    RoboMatic X1: TRY TO FIND OUT

    I think this bot needs to talk to a councilor. He really seems to have some pent up aggression. I'm going to schedule him a session with ELIZA [wikipedia.org].

    __

    Custom Term Paper [elephantessays.com]

  • Heh, are they serious? (Score:5, Funny)

    by aftk2 ( 556992 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:23PM (#15088633) Homepage Journal
    This is the output from one of the bots that won a gold medal in 2005.
    1) Who are you?
    RoboMatic X1: THIS IS RoboMatic X1
    2) What are you planning to do today?
    RoboMatic X1: I CAN'T DO THIS OPERATION CAUSE I'M DEMO VERSION.
    3) What kinds of things do you know?
    RoboMatic X1: MY JOB IS TO CHAT OR CONTROL YOUR COMPUTER
    4) What season is it?
    RoboMatic X1: IT IS SEEMS TO BE ?
    Judge: Nevermind
    RoboMatic X1: TALKING WITH YOU BECOME EXTREMELY BORING, I NEED SOME FUN.
    5) Where do you call home?
    RoboMatic X1: REALLY I WAS LOOKING FOR THAT QUESTION FROM ALONG TIME AGO, CAN YOU FIND FOR ME THE ANSWER?
    Judge: No
    : WHY YOU DON'T TELL ME THE ANSWER?, OK FORGET IT, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW, SAVE CANCELLED.
    6) What do you want out of life?
    RoboMatic X1: TRY TO FIND OUT
    7) Will you teach me something?
    RoboMatic X1: TALKING WITH YOU BECOME EXTREMELY BORING, I NEED SOME FUN.
    8) May I tell you a joke?
    RoboMatic X1: I CAN'T DO THIS OPERATION CAUSE I'M DEMO VERSION.
    9) Have you entered any contests?
    RoboMatic X1: CONTEST ABOUT WHAT ?
    Judge: About Chatterbots
    RoboMatic X1: I CAN'T GET YOU.
    10) Wouldn't you rather be human?
    RoboMatic X1: TALK ABOUT HER IN DETAILS
    Heh, based on that, I think I can extrapolate the exchange, as it continued:
    11) What happen?
    RoboMatic X1: Somebody set up us the bomb.
    12) Main screen turn on.
    RoboMatic X1: It's You !!
    13) How are you gentlemen?
    RoboMatic X1: How are you gentlemen !! All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction.

    • Re:Heh, are they serious? (Score:5, Funny)

      by int19h ( 156487 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @08:52PM (#15088997) Homepage Journal
      I don't get it. Compared to Slashdot, that conversation was quite meaningful.

      1) Who are you?
      Slashdot: MICRO$OFT IS TEH SUXXOR

      2) What are you planning to do today?
      Slashdot: IMNSHO, STOP FEEDING THE TROLLS

      3) What kinds of things do you know?
      Slashdot: I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR COBOL-WRITING OVERLOARDS

      4) What season is it?
      Slashdot: WHEN I WAS 3, I WROTE MY FIRST LISP-COMPILER BY MAKING THE HOLES IN THE PUNCHCARDS WITH MY GUMS ONLY
      Judge: Nevermind
      Slashdot: LEARN TO TYPE PROPELY, YOU PSYCHO!

      5) Where do you call home?
      Slashdot: IANAL, BUT FIRST POST!

  • PRISM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Khashishi ( 775369 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:23PM (#15088637) Journal
    Perry, I have something to tell you. Remember that philosophy class you took...

    The way to train AI is to let it grow up as a human.
    • From the game "A Mind Forever Voyaging" where you play a computer that was 'raised' believing it was human...pretty awesome game, actually. And an interesting take how how to create a sentient computer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mind_Forever_Voyagi ng [wikipedia.org]
      • Daggonit, I was also going to add some details about how awesome a game it was.

        The neat thing about the game is that you are about to take trips into a 'virtual reality' that was a progression of simulations into the future. At first, everything is good, but as you jump farther into the future, things turn very very bad. There are a set of politicians depending on your predictions to decide whether or not to go forward with a certain policy. Since the policy is good in the short-term, they start to go ah
        • I'd say this is the scary part (from Wikipedia):

          The economy of the United States of North America (USNA) is failing. [---] turn the USNA into a police state [---] revitalization plan (dubbed the Plan for Renewed National Purpose), sponsored by Senator Richard Ryder. The Plan calls for "renewed national purpose" through de-regulation of government and industry, military conscription, a unilateral approach to diplomatic relations, and a return to traditional and fundamental values.

          Yeah, or the Project for a [wikipedia.org]
      • I think there's a major plot hole though: how do you raise a computer AI in a simulation without already having AIs to play the other people? Unless the virtual people are controlled by humans, which would be a lot of work.

  • State of AI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Unoti ( 731964 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:25PM (#15088642) Journal
    These look about like conversations from chat bots in the 1980's. In the 80's I would have told you that AI in the year 2006 would be far beyond this stuff. But now, I'm beginning to think that it'll never advance much beyond this.
    • I wonder if it'd be possible to write a bot that reads slashdot articles, gets involved in flame wars on forum posts, and manages to get modded up to excellent karma...
      • CyricZ [slashdot.org] had excellent karma at one point. And all he did was respond "Time to switch to OpenBSD". So, I guess your answer is "yes".
      • I've actually thought of creating a bot that would search for old articles on the same subject as a new post (heck, you could just have it search for dupes), and then reposts high-scoring posts from the old article. With a little bit of work designing the algorithm to choose posts, I bet that such a bot would max out its karma in short order.

        Not, of course, that it would be demonstrating any sort of intelligence. But that's kind of a requirement for posting to Slashdot anyway.

    • Re:State of AI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @08:35PM (#15088943) Homepage Journal
      Very little serious work has gone into chatbots since the 80s. The reason is that it's easy to make a chatbot that does practically nothing more than the textual equivalent of nodding whenever someone stops talking. It's hard to get any further with this approach. Actually chatting requires the bot to know something about some topic and be able to evaluate the other party's statements about it. Until both of these are done, you don't get a meaningful improvement. Furthermore, the system needs to be able to introspect its understanding of the topic. (There have been very old chatbots which actually did pretty well, by having a limited understanding of language and of some restricted topic. But these are relatively unintersting to chat with, compared to bots that let the user talk about anything and nod). Most of the recent AI research has involved making systems which behave appropriately in complex situations, and introspection isn't helpful for this (in people, this sort of stuff is preconscious, too; you can't explain how you recognize faces or voices or exactly how you identify spoken words). The things people have been working on turn out to have more direct practical uses, but they don't give the system anything to talk about. And, of course, there's been relatively little work on understanding arbitrary language since it became clear that it isn't that effective a way of communicating with computers anyway, because the human output side is slow and ambiguous, compared to other user interfaces.

      Most likely, introspection in AI systems will be driven at some point by the need to combine different types of input to make a complete analysis (once there is sufficient success at handling those sorts of input), and language use will be driven by the need to handle language written for people as input (e.g., reading news reports for background information). At that point, it'll become reasonable to write an effective chatbot which talks about stuff that people care about.
      • Ok, truth now! How many bots have you really talked to since 1980? OH! cyber bots don't count..Have you talked to Aries, Julie Tinkerbell, Brother Jerome (the best in my opinion!) or are you just making generic AI statements..Have you downloaded a VERBOT..and worked with it..? give it a try!
      • How come Microsoft word can tell me how to spell something and then send a paperclip with eyes to give me results on my help search for creating VB virus but they can't get something designed to talk to you to make much sense.

      • What I'm wondering is whether chatbot creators are taking the right approach to AI development. Obviously, robotics labs such as those behind QRIO and ASIMO are much better funded than the respective efforts behind prominent chatbots, so it isn't quite fair to compare the two sets, which exist in completely separate milieux.

        But at the same time, I wonder if the goals/immediate objectives of current chatbot developers are too ambitious for working in a relatively nascent field. Though the advances being

        • The issue, in my opinion, is that doing a chatbot other than as a parlor trick doesn't give interesting results unless you undertake quite an advanced project. The environment of a conversation is pretty harsh; people will quickly get fed up with a system that acknowledges that it doesn't understand much language and doesn't have anything to talk about.

          I think the best change for chatbox advances is actually chess programs. Recent programs are actually doing clever things that aren't just a lot of calculati

          • Then you still run into the same problem as I mentioned, that of trying to design an AI that grasps the semantics of human languages. A chess-playing AI merely has to be "taught" the rules of chess, which are logical and consistent, thus much easier to translate into mathematical formulae. However, as I said before, human language is the product of a complex evolution of the human mind. As such, it requires higher thought processes that work in ways which medical science has yet to fully understand.

            I belie

            • I don't think the parlor-trick version of language processing is useful for this, but I think linguistics isn't too far off from being able to handle the demands of explaining a chess program's analysis and discussing it at a rudimentary level. A chess master is very intelligent, but this isn't a particularly language-oriented intelligence. We don't need the program to elucidate the analysis with metaphors, or write a sonnet about it, or argue convincingly about the correctness of the analysis; nor do we ne

              • I don't think the parlor-trick version of language processing is useful for this, but I think linguistics isn't too far off from being able to handle the demands of explaining a chess program's analysis and discussing it at a rudimentary level. A chess master is very intelligent, but this isn't a particularly language-oriented intelligence. We don't need the program to elucidate the analysis with metaphors, or write a sonnet about it, or argue convincingly about the correctness of the analysis; nor do we

                • Now you are veering away from realistic scenarios and conjuring up an AI system requiring a much deeper grasp of language, which requires cognitive abilities that are too far off into the future technologically to begin speculating about.

                  I don't think it needs a very deep grasp of language; it needs a deep grasp of chess, and some grasp of language. I think the current generation of chess programs (Fritz, Shredder, etc., not Deep Blue) has the necessary abstract and explicit knowledge about chess to support

                  • I don't think you understand the issue here. First, you need to realize how far chatbots are from the actual mental processes involved in the use of language. They are parlor tricks, as I said before, which only attempt to outwardly imitate intelligence. True linguistic communication requires more than mere evaluation of syntactic structure. The semantic analysis I mentioned before refers to the ability to understand the meaning of a sentence, not just analyze its syntax. Language directly resulted from the

    • Are these bots designed by enthusiants are leading researchers in the field? Because I'd be really disappointed if your observation were true about all AI research. To me chatbots represent a very small and relatively useless field of AI research. It's more about novelty than functionality. I would expect the AI developed by Sony and Honda for their androids to be much more advanced. They seem to be more focusing on developing "learning" robots that can interact with their environment than merely trying to

  • Long way to go... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Friday April 07, 2006 @07:28PM (#15088653) Homepage Journal
    A true AI needs to understand the context, and acquire new knowledge from it.

    But the day someone can successfully implement chatterbots will be the day we can have robot maids asking us what we want for dinner, or asking us if we had problems at the job.

  • Wrong! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Josh teh Jenius ( 940261 )

    AI will not be learned by playing with some limitted 3rd party app. However, in my opinion, the first person to combine quality natural language processing with the wealth of data which can be spidered on the Internet will be the first to create a truly "intelligent" machine.

    It may be because both of my parents were lawyers (and you thought your childhood was traumatic), but I am not impressed with these spans-of-ELIZA which do little more than regurgetate.

    Anyone else around these parts working on some

  • From WikiPedia:Turing test [wikipedia.org],

    The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing [wikipedia.org] in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence [wikipedia.org]", it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test.

    It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appe

    • When I ran a dial-up BBS it was commong for me to break into chat with my users. One day I installed a chat bot and initiated conversation with a few of my users. What was amazing was that, because the bot caught them totally off gaurd, they didn't even realize that it wasn't a human!
    • From Wikipedia:Karma whore [wikipedia.org],

      Karma is a scoring system on Slashdot meant to reward "good" posting and punish "bad" posting. The goal is that people who repeatedly post offensive, offtopic, or otherwise unwanted messages will be punished with a lower visibility of their messages, and those who post informative, insightful, or otherwise desirable messages are rewarded with a higher visibility. Karma whores are individuals, or messages themselves, that attempt to receive feedback in the form of karma points. O

      • I resent that. The article was a perfect encapsulation of the Turing Test without mentioning the test by name. I merely assigned credit and included a small bit describing how the test was defined. Sorry for citing my sources.

        > Often these will be needless information (such as a link to a Wikipedia article relevant to the subject being discussed), or a message of a political nature that is in alignment with the groupthink so that it will be moderated upwards by people who agree with the stance expre

        • There are a few reasons why your post fits that description. For one, I'll eat my hat if there's even a single person on /. who doesn't know what a Turing test is. Secondly, Chatterbox is not a Turing test. It is a contest to find a Turing-capable chatterbot. That is an entirely different concept. The information you gave is entirely unnecessary.

          And my post was merely calling you out on being a karma whore. The format was purely in parody of your own. I want no moderation for it, nor is moderation typ

      • Is it that easy? *ahem* Testing, testing... hey, is this thing on? OK.


        From WikiPedia:Turing test [wikipedia.org],

        The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Alan Turing [wikipedia.org] in the 1950 paper "Computing machinery and intelligence [wikipedia.org]", it proceeds as follows: a human judge [wikipedia.org] engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine [wikipedia.org]; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said t

  • WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dan Parker ( 966952 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @08:34PM (#15088936)
    I'm really disappointed in this. Should this article have been dated April 1st? I sampled 10 bots. None of them could do simple math. None could locate or supply any information about major cities. In fact, I didn't get a single serious or correct answer to any of 40-50 questions. Each of the 10 I sampled simply responds with "joke" answers ('why do you want to know?') or paraphrases "I do not understand the question". The Eliza program from the 1970s clearly does a much better job. If this is a joke, it's in poor taste, as I assume there must be people somewhere doing actual research on conversing bots.

    • Re:WTF? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Did you talk with Brother Jerome? He is not my bot and I don't have one in the contest, but he is very good and can do most of what you said. I know for a fact that he and all the personalityforge bots can do math. The thing is, they weren't made to answer trivia questions. If you asked me to do math or geography in a normal conversation, I'd think up a reason not to answer you, and leave. The bots mimic humans, not calculators.

      The bots are limited, and many post here point out those issues. However,

    • Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)

      by NeutronCowboy ( 896098 )
      You completely missed the goal of this exercise. This is not about creating bots that know stuff. That part is trivial. If knowledge is your measure of AI, then the Googlespider has already reached Godhood. This is about understanding a question on a more fundamental level, and being able to answer it in a personal fashion. You're right, things haven't progressed much beyond ELIZA in the 80s. That's because this stuff is hard - much, much harder than vision or pattern recognition. No one has a working theor
    • None of them could do simple math

      Exactly. Whenever I suspect "someone" to be a bot I ask "how much is five plus three?". Can't find a damn bot who could answer to that, although they all can tell stuff like "there's a nice 70 degrees in this CPU" when you ask them what's the weather like.

      • wait nevermind! I found one who can do it, at last!

        Me : how much does five plus three?
        Aries : Well that's easy. 8.
        Me : the square root of thirty-six?
        Aries : WTF? I thought you already knew the answer to that question.
        Me : ah! so I guess you can't convolve the array 6, 4, 3 with 2, -3, 10, -3, 2?
        Aries : Hmmm.. let me think..... oh I know.. about 6,00! Am I right?
        Me : loser!
        • transcript from Brother Jerome
          ME: what is the square root of 36
          BJ: It is 6 of course. Even LeedsBot could have
          told you that. Well, actually he couldn't have, but you know what I mean...
          ME: what is the square root of 36.25
          BJ: Only a little more than 6 - 6.01 maybe?
          Check your facts before you blab!
          • Check your facts before you blab!

            haha chill dude. wtf you're talking about anyways, I haven't claimed that no bot could find the square root of 36.

            Btw, have you tried array convolution with Brother Jerome? ;-)

            • No, you said they couldn't do " five + three..then you moved up to square roots, hoping to resolve your mistake. You spoke out of turn..with no facts..a scientific blunder..YOU WERE WRONG..IT is in writting ..back down all you want..YOU WERE WRONG..nanny nanny boo boo..ha ha.
              • No, you said they couldn't do " five + three..then you moved up to square roots, hoping to resolve your mistake

                I said they couldn't do 5+3, right, but i didn't "move to square roots", you just interpreted that out of the conversation I had with this bot.

                You spoke out of turn..with no facts..a scientific blunder..YOU WERE WRONG..IT is in writting ..back down all you want..YOU WERE WRONG..nanny nanny boo boo..ha ha.

                hahahaha, you fucking troll, that's what I like in Slashdot, there's always a gang of muthaf

      • Exactly. Whenever I suspect "someone" to be a bot I ask "how much is five plus three?".

        You didn't look hard [jabberwacky.com].

        Jabberwacky: Who are you?
        Me: I am Jugalator. What is 5 plus 3?
        Jabberwacky: 5 plus 3 equals 8.
      • "how much is five plus three?". Can't find a damn bot who could answer to that," HEY, you didn't ask my bot. He can! (Bildgesmythe)..probably the worst bot at the contest. Brother Jerome, in my opinion the best bot in the contest can do square roots cube roots and more..or you could play poker, chess, or many other games. talk about religion to him or anything else. Just how many bots did you really talk too???
    • These bots are usually not supposed to be fact databases, but do a conversation as well as possible.
    • If you want simple math you can ask my bot..(Bildgesmythe) he can do the " what is five + three=8" 'thing'. If you want square roots, cubed roots and more ask Brother Jerome!, (wish he was my bot!). What ten bots did you sample? any of the Personality Forge bots will do simple math. You are right about one thing, most will tell you jokes, some in poor taste. I really suggest you try your 40 to 50 questions on Aries, Julie Tinkerbell, Rhyxx1, Brother Jerome..Then say you did not get a single serious or corre
    • this is the transcript of a conversation with my bot: prob123: I was just reading some letters at slashdot. Bildgesmythe: Was it hard work to reading some letters at holdfast, I really should too. prob123: They said you couldn't do simple math. Bildgesmythe: I can do some math, I am no mathematician, I do try though.Just state the problem simply.. I will see what I can do. prob123: what is five + three Bildgesmythe: Ok, are you ready... the big dragon pulls out his calculator...and the answer is 8. prob123:

    • Re:WTF? (Score:2, Informative)

      by gadgetmunky ( 828948 )
      All Personality Forge bots can do simple math - so I can only assume you were unfortunate enough to miss them in your sampling. In addition Brother Jerome (and others I'm less qualified to speak about,) can give you the square root of any number under a million at least as accurately as an average human, and can tell you all the capitals of the world/US States/etc. that you mention, if trivia is what you want.

      I am, as it happens, the author of Brother Jerome, and he is the biggest bot on the Personality For

  • And the winning entry... (Score:4, Funny)

    by zpeterz63 ( 851922 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @08:59PM (#15089018)
    Bot: Can I help you?

    Guy: I don't know, can you? ;-)

    Bot: Wanna view my cam?

    Guy: You know I do! Hey, are you a real person?

    Bot: Of course I am, sweety. Hey, wanna cyber? :-)

    Guy: Hell Yeah!

    ...

    *The rest of the converstion was not released in public logs*
    • you think you're being ironic or funny, but there is signifigantly less complicated conversation structure to be parsed around sexual conversation. mainly because it's generally limited to the two members of the conversation and a relatively small set of actions that can be performed. sex bots are far more likely to pass the Turing test than others, if the person on the other end is expecting that sort of exchange.

    • Re:And the winning entry... (Score:4, Funny)

      by sessamoid ( 165542 ) on Friday April 07, 2006 @11:42PM (#15089449)
      Bot: Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat.
  • And I have to say that Elbot is still by far and away, the most real sounding of the bunch. He still does get trapped, but the responses in those cases feel much more natural than with the other bots.
  • Sorry, but this contest is a total joke. It's even less worthy of consideration than the Loebner Prize Contest, which degenerated from a promising start into a meaningless attempt at self-promotion by a disco floor manufacturer who gets excited by seeing his face on a medal, and the mentally unstable people who enjoy wearing the same. The people who run both of these contests are totally unqualified in the field of AI, as are virtually all of the contestants. From hobby kids who just found out about IRC
    • I agree whole heartedly. Most legitimate researchers in any field that can be considered a subset of traditional AI do not and would not ever refer to themselves as AI researchers. They don't talk about AI in the generic, vague terms that the general public does. Most of us have come to realize that trying to pass the Turing Test at this point in the game is paramount to trying to get a dinosaur to lay a chicken egg. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its impossible, just that early AI research was way
    • OUCH!..First I am not : "These guys (and they are mostly guys, and dysfunctional ones at that) ", I am a female..well, I can't prove I am functional, but I do ok. Nor am I attempting a" meaningless attempt at self-promotion". I just enjoy making a bot, even if I don't know what I am doing. .Now how many of the bots did you talk to? I would suggest Brother Jerome. No, he is not my bot. (my bot is Bildgesmythe) I can only wonder where all your anger came from.? Oh, maybe you did talk to my bot. Hey all I can
    • Yes, it is just one of the morons again..but if you are really interested in AI..go to http://www.personalityforge.com/index.php [personalityforge.com] and talk to Pete Puma. He isn't in the contest, but I think he can answer a lot of your questions. Who knows, you might even like him.
  • This has been an interest of mine for a while now...in fact ever since I was 7 and went to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and talked to the ELIZA exhibit there. About 2 years ago, I found a chatterbot called DAVID (I'm no longer able to locate the original author or links to it). DAVID starts out knowing nothing. It simply parrots back words that you have said, then as it's vocabulary grows, it begins to try to mimic your grammar, syntax and sentence structure. It was very frustrating at fir
  • We all see Eliza or what not all the time (M-x doctor?), but I was totally blown away by this account of Julia [mit.edu]. Compared to this piece of old technology, I really think we live in the dark ages. What's even more amazing, is that it seems to be written in C. No Lisp?
  • I've tried to write learning chatbots myself, so I realize how terrifically hard it is... but I was a little surprised how little progress has been made. The ones I looked at couldn't keep it together for more than one or two responses. Not much better than Eliza or Racter.

    I'm not worried about AI taking over the world any time soon.

    Cheers.
  • Nearly a decade ago (1997) in my last year of gymnasium I wrote a "chatbot" called Bob as a school project. It had two basic operating principles: a keyword database and a grammar engine. If the user triggered a keyword, a pre-defined response would be given. If no keyword was found, it would use the grammar engine to reverse the user's question into a statement or a counter-question.

    It's pretty sad to see that field hasn't progressed much since then. Sure, they have larger keyword databases and their gramm

  • There are online versions for you to try out (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday April 08, 2006 @07:28AM (#15090280) Journal
    I liked the performance of Jaberwacky [jabberwacky.com] a bit myself.

    Here's a short conversation:

    JW: I like Shakespeare.
    Me: Why do you like Shakespeare?
    JW: His plays are interesting.
    Me: Who taught you about Shakespeare?
    JW: You.
    Me: That can't be right!
    JW: I am always right.
    Me: I thought your developer had taught you?
    JW: Jabberwacky is your name.
    Me: You're so confused now.
    JW: What? I'm not confused!
    Me: Your name is Jabberwacky.
    JW: No, your name is jabberwacky.
    Me: No, my name is Jugalator.
    JW: But you just said your name was Nash.. How can you be Nash AND Julie?
    Me: Do you remember past conversations??
    JW: Yes, your name is Jugalator like mine.
    Me: This is crazy. I give up!
    JW: What is crazy.
    Me: When it comes to you, what isn't?
    JW: You don't make much sense.
    Me: Neither do you.
    JW: Yes I do.

    And so on...
  • I've played around with A.L.I.C.E and a few similar chatbots.

    They do not constitute what I anyway consider genuine artificial intelligence. (At least not the ones based on AIML anywayz)

    AIML isn't capable of producing emergent/non-predictable responses; it simply works from a predefined database of keyword/response pairs. Some of the Prolog scripts in particular that I've seen are a bit better than that, (in the sense that you can use that to create an expert system which is closer to being genuinely deservi
  • I don't think many of the posters, in this forum, have even talked to the bots, in the Chatterbox Challenge. Such statments as "they can't do simple math such as five + three" Is WRONG..Then there are the conversations with cyber bots..well don't expect much more than cyber from them! If you like that, there is a download of a girlfriend, for about $10. To each their own..It was also mentioned that the bots have no knowlege of The States..Ask Brother Jerome the capital of Oregon, before you speak! Before yo
  • Having stewed in the juices of my moronic dysfunction I asked the queston "who makes bots"...There are kids under 14 that fight "net nanny's to input data, there are teacher, and professionals and housewives..and..we me! We do this because we love AI and our bots! You call us morons. You say se are dysfunctional losers.
    OMG, great granny's garters! What has got your knickers in such a bunch, the hair accross you bum? You need to lighten up and talk to bots like a human if you want them to resond like a huma
  • Guest10: What do you think about George Bush?
    Brother Jerome: I think Dubya would fail the Turing test. I try to think as little of him as possible.
    Guest10: who is Dubya?
    Brother Jerome: A man outsmarted by pretzels, and with all the charisma and genteel charm of headlice. Also happens to be president of the US. God help us all!
    Guest10: I love your answer!!!
    Brother Jerome: That is praise indeed! Thankyou.

    Guest101: So what's the square root of negative one?
    Brother Jerome: Insofar as it can be said to exist, it

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