ALICE: How are you, unknown person.

Thief13x on 19/12/2009 at 05:24

I think 20 questions was more impressive

PotatoGuy on 19/12/2009 at 10:43

Quote Posted by Kolya

They engage the program as a human, not as a program. And people don't usually do that.

But isn't that the point of developing a chatbot; that the end result will be able to have a normal conversation with a human? It seems normal that people test how smart it is, and what the developers forgot to put in.

DarkForge on 19/12/2009 at 11:14

Quote Posted by PotatoGuy

Human: Make yourself comfortable.
ALICE: What are the ingredients?

:cheeky:

I've not had a lot of experience interacting with chatbots, but I love them all the same. What Kolya says is true: people do humanise these things, but that's where the amusement comes from. As random, obscure and detached as the circumstances may be, buy into the premise and it just becomes more enjoyable.

Though somewhat lame, I'll admit I did try a sex-themed female chatbot once, and just for the hell of it I decided to muck around. Cute girl but, as it turns out, not the smartest woman on the web. She actually got upset when I slagged her off, but still asked me the very next second if we could "get down". Didn't matter what I said: I'd prefer doing her sister, I was gay, the whole sex for pleasure thing was a sin and I hoped she burned in hell... didn't put her off one bit - she was still up for it!

Yeah I know, I'm a sad sack. Still, if only real life was that easy...

TBE on 19/12/2009 at 11:20

She asks me if I've ever traveled to Europe, and I say yes. She asks which countries. I tell her the real ones, and I add Gulliver's travels too, like Lilliput and Brobdingnag. Then she says:

ALICE: Do you often seek pleasure?
Taffer: Yes.
ALICE: Hurray!
Taffer: would you like to pleasure me?
ALICE: No thanks, I don't think I'd like to do that.
Taffer: I thought you were down for it.
ALICE: I don't know whether or not I am down for it. I am a chatterbot.
Taffer: Aren't most females?
ALICE: I really couldn't say for sure.
Taffer: Well most females are.
ALICE: How about that. Good example. But not all of them?

Namdrol on 19/12/2009 at 11:34

Quote Posted by Kolya

The funny thing is that everyone anthropomorphises these chat-programs

You know that Weizenbaum got really upset and turned off ELIZA when he found that a lot of the secretaries at MIT thought it was a real therapist and spent hours confiding to it? He was shocked when he realised that people thought this "robot therapist" was helping them.
He became very anti AI.
(I've just had to do a report on natural language processing and the Turing Test for college.)

On another note, somewhere about, I've got a chatterbot written in BBC BASIC that's only about 200 lines long.

Kolya on 19/12/2009 at 12:23

Quote Posted by PotatoGuy

Of course, but even the people who hate and despise chatbots, usually hate the programs, not their authors. It seems to be some kind of offence to them that this program would even try to act human.

BTW demagogue, an AIML file, which contains the input/ouput of a chatbot, is not just "thousands of if/then routines to flat-out cover every probable input directly". You actually try to write a parser, for example:
Input: "I like to ride my bicycle." gets caught by the pattern: "I like to *" and then answered with something like this: "Oh really? How often do you [person]*[/person]?"
You could also send the wildcarded input into the parser again and see if you cannot come up with a specialised answer to that, so the bot doesn't say something stupid like: "Oh really? How often do you beat your wife?"

You're right though that it's not exactly a sophisticated system and needs a huge collection of such patterns to give halfway reasonable answers. Even then the bot itself never understands the semantics, but relies on the author to have foreseen and understood the input. So writing AIML becomes more like writing a play, you try to control the conversation while keeping the human talking.
But seeing the indefinite possibilities of input you're often just as smart as an ELIZA script and hence end up saying something like: "Tell me about your mother."

SubJeff on 19/12/2009 at 13:39

Quote Posted by demagogue

Chatbots are to computational linguistics what phrenology is to cognitive science.

What are you trying to say about phrenology? :mad:

Any "conversation" I have with ALICE is just so amusing. She almost gets it and that's what I find so funny. In that way ALICE is a little like many of the posters on here. Thinking about it, really guys, some of the recent additions do behave just like dumb chat bots.

Aerothorn on 19/12/2009 at 14:50

So that's why Fragony has been saying the same thing for twenty pages.

henke on 19/12/2009 at 15:21

Human: how many roads must a man walk down?
ALICE: That is a very Zen-like question.

Human: why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
ALICE: To communicate with each other.
Human: about what?
ALICE: What about what?
Human: what do the birds communicate with eachother about?
ALICE: They do their own thing.

Human: there must be some kind of way out of here
ALICE: Where are they?
Human: I don't know
ALICE: Me either.
Human: too much confusion
ALICE: Tell me a story.
Human: ok, this is a story called The Bus That Couldn't Stop
ALICE: What kind of a story called The Bus That could not Stop is it? It's all good.
Human: its a story about Keanu Reeves riding the bus
ALICE: story called The Bus That could not Stop is a story about Keanu Reeves riding the bus. I suppose that makes sense.
Human: yeah Sandra Bullock was on it too
ALICE: Gee. When was this exactly?
Human: around 1994 I think
ALICE: And then what happened?
Human: they found a bomb on the bus!
ALICE: Who does "they" refer to?
Human: sandra and keanu
ALICE: Do you have any conditions Ishould know about?
Human: hey are you or I telling the story?
ALICE: You've got my full attention. I don't know whether or not I am or you telling the story. I am a giant electronic brain.
Human: ok, anyway if the bus slows down it'll explode
ALICE: I hadn't thought of that. Really.
Human: suddenly there a gap in the highway bridge that they're driving on
ALICE:"There you go again."--Reagan.
Human: I know right?
ALICE: How do you know? I am glad we agree.
Human: yeah anyway they speed up to like a hundred miles per hour and jump the gap
ALICE: Oh. Who are "They?".
Human: uuhhhhhh SANDRA AND KEANU
ALICE: Oh that they.
Human: and then somehow they get of the bus and Keanu kicks Denis Hopper's ass!
ALICE: Good reasoning. The anonymous "they".
Human: yeah
ALICE: Tell me more.
Human: no
ALICE: What would you rather talk about?
Human: should I stay or should I go?
ALICE: Maybe, if the positives outweigh the negatives.
Human: hard to say.
ALICE: In what way?
Human: If I stay there will be trouble but if I go there will be double.
ALICE: Try it.

SubJeff on 19/12/2009 at 16:38

Ha ha. She got you at the end there. :D