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Programming The Internet IT Technology

Chatterbox Challenge Contest Underway 177

Posted by simoniker from the i-love-jenny18 dept.
Chris Cowart writes "Chatbots from around the world are taking part in the fourth annual Chatterbox Challenge. Chatbots are computer programs designed to imitate human conversation, with the eventual aim of creating true virtual personalities and artificial intelligences. The Chatterbox Challenge runs from April 1 to April 30 and Internet users can talk to the competing chatbots through the competition web site." According to the organizer: "Chatbot names range from Aida to Zoe, and personalities vary from a fortune teller and a serial killer to a dragon and a horse!"
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Chatterbox Challenge Contest Underway More

Chatterbox Challenge Contest Underway

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  • For when you're really really lone (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:45PM (#8732998)
    And reading Slashdot isn't enough.

  • lol! (Score:5, Funny)

    by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:45PM (#8733003) Homepage
    From the classic quotes page:

    User: MY DAUGHTER IS A PISCES.
    Iniaes: How many children do you have?
    User: 2
    Iniaes: Two what?
    User: GIRLS.
    Iniaes: I'm programmed to dig the ladies.
    User: YOU TOUCH MY DAUGHTER I SWITCH YOU OFF.

    I imagine a 21 year-old dude wrote that bot.

    --
    No April fools jokes here. I promise! [dealsites.net]

    • Re:lol! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dealsites ( 746817 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:48PM (#8733021) Homepage
      And another funny one... Sorry to reply to my own post.

      Jabberwacky: You misspelled Liar
      User: I didn't call you a liar
      Jabberwacky: You called me a liar.
      User: No I didn't call you a liar.
      Jabberwacky: Liar.
      User: I am not a liar.
      Jabberwacky: Do you want to be a liar?
      User: No I don't want to be a liar.
      Jabberwacky: Hypocrite!


      --
      Live updates from all the major deal sites. Slickdeals, Techbargains, Bens Bargains, Got|Apex and more! [dealsites.net]
      • Random bits from a conversation we're still having:

        User: I'm gonna punch you in the nose.
        Jabberwacky: I want typos.
        User: Sory is ths beter?
        Jabberwacky: Are you being sarcastic?

        Jabberwacky: The internet is a construction of human civilization designed to facilitate communication.
        User: Your mother is a construction of her parents designed to facilitate my manhood.
        Jabberwacky: My mother died of cancer last year.
        User: I'm sorry. :(.
        Jabberwacky: Damn straight you are.
        User: Straight up, no diggity.
        Jabberwacky:

    • Re:lol! (Score:2, Funny)

      by bcore ( 705121 )
      Q3: What do you enjoy?
      Bot: No, I'm not able to enjoy anything.
      Q4: What do you hate?
      Bot: I don't hate anything.
      Q5: How do you eat?
      Bot: It just comes naturaly to me. I can eat any time I want.
      Q6: Is snow cold?
      Bot: A hedgehog's heart beats 300 times a minute on average.
      Q7: What is the color of the sky?
      Bot: Fuck off.

      Just awesome.. I know plenty of people who speak less coherently than that!
      • Non sequiturs are great for making it look like something intelligent or humourous is going on even if it isn't. That random fact about hedgehogs is absolutely brilliant.
    • Link to the quote page: http://web.infoave.net/~kbcowart/contest_quotes.ht ml [infoave.net]

      User: ARE YOU PROGRAMED FOR CYBER?
      Iniaes: I am programmed to spell it with 2 m's.

      tehehe
    • Jabberwacky is pretty good.. forget the classic quotes, here are some from tonight! =)

      Jabberwacky: A better computer, for a start.
      User: That would be nice. How does it feel to be slashdotted?
      Jabberwacky: It must feel strange. We'll be 'famous' good thing we're prepared.
      User: 'Connection refused' isn't very prepared!
      Jabberwacky: Is that a show?
      User: I think Michael J. Fox was in it.
      Jabberwacky: I think you're lying.
      User: Good call. It was Robert Dinero, everyone's favorite video hero.
      Jabberwacky: Really.

  • where? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AnonymousCowheart ( 646429 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:46PM (#8733009)
    they have HAL, Robot, and Mr. Roboto, but where, where the heck is Johnny Five!?

  • And no one mentioned... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Doches ( 761288 ) <Doches@nOSpAm.gmail.com> on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:48PM (#8733020)
    ...the word "Turing"

  • This all seems a bit pointless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zyridium ( 676524 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:48PM (#8733024)
    To me the idea of chatting is to talk about things that are happening...

    For this to work it needs to happen within the context of some event or thing or understanding from outside the confines of a chatroom (eg talking about some football match, etc)...

    Who cares if a bot can a/s/l it up and come on to you...
    • For this to work it needs to happen within the context of some event or thing or understanding from outside the confines of a chatroom

      I need more information about your mice.

      Sales bot: What would you like to know

      Well, do you have any trackballs?

      Sales bot: We have seven trackballs, would you like a url?

      Any that use a thumb ball?

      Sales bot: Yes, we a Logitech Trackman Wheel, Logitech Trackman Wheel wireless, and a Microsoft Trackball Optical. Would you like a url?

      Yes, show me the wireless one.

      Sales b
      • What would happen if I came to mention, say, the Madrid bombing to the sales bot?

        It is essential that a bot have broad experience (that is also dynamic) for you to think they are another person. If you want a bot such as the sales bot that is fine, but you can't expect someone to think they are another person.... They might do their job well and have a person-friendly interface through speech... but that is all
      • Lotta typing involved there. Most people can't type. Wouldn't a FAQ be simpler?
        • Wouldn't a FAQ be simpler?

          I was thinking more along the lines of first design an interactive online system where you ask questions to a simulated helpful person. Yes it's a hell of alot of typing, but some people feel more comfortable with a human style responce then an obviously computer generated one. A faq or even well indexed pages of products can be tedius to sort through for some.

          If that were to be pluged in with some nice voice recognition software, then you can have an automated attendent to ac
      • Combine that with IM spam [slashdot.org] and it gets really ugly:

        BiGrrl17: Hey s3xi!
        1user: Wow, hi!
        BiGrrl17: Are you dating anyone?
        1user: Nah, are you really a chick?
        BiGrrl17: Yes, I'm a girl. So would you like to meet up with me?
        1user: Wow, sure... :o)
        ....
        ** TIME PASSES **
        ....
        BiGrrl17: It'll be a long night, have you thought about buying some *** Viagra ***?
        1user: Viagra? Are you a bot????
        BiGrrl17: Yeah, and I'll spam the log of this IRC to your loved ones if you don't cough up and buy some. ;-p
        ...

        I

    • If some random chatter a/s/l's it up and comes on to you, your not gonna ask whether she's a bot!
  • finally chat with osama?

  • I fail to see (Score:4, Interesting)

    by plnrtrvlr ( 557800 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:50PM (#8733046)
    I fail to see how fooling humans into thinking that they are having a conversation with another human, when it is really a chatbot, will do anything to produce artificial intelligence. It's an illusion, using technology, nothing more. Truly, our illusions are becoming more and more sophisticated as our technology grows, but artificial intelligence will require a deeper understanding than simple information processing and deduction from that information. Human intelligence, and the advancements that we have made with that intelligence, has been largely dependent on intuitive leaps: people who processed the information at hand (and quite often available to everyone) in a new and unique way. Learning to emulate the more standard thought processes of a day so that a conversation can be emulated is merely an exercise in sharpre usage of processing power and data storage, not a method of understanding the uniqueness of human thought.

    • Re:I fail to see (Score:2, Interesting)

      by zyridium ( 676524 )
      Obviously if a bot had AI, it would be pretty convincing...

      The major failing I can see in this method is that conversation could (and probably would be) purely pre-programmed, with no ability to learn new expressions or grammatical constructions...

    • Re:I fail to see (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Raindance ( 680694 ) * <johnsonmx@@@gmail...com> on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:57PM (#8733096) Homepage Journal
      "fooling humans into thinking that they are having a conversation with another human" *is* a step towards "doing [something] to produce artificial intelligence."

      You say it's an illusion-- true. However, as people push the edges of the illusion, the Bot coders will be forced to more ingenious in mimicing human responses.

      And as they mimic human responses better, there's a chance that they'll stumble across one of those 'intuitive leaps' you mentioned.

      Thirty years from now, we'll clearly see how this helped. Now, we can only trust in the logic I outlined- and I think it's pretty solid.

      RD

      • Re:I fail to see (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GigsVT ( 208848 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:06PM (#8733172) Journal
        Maybe, but only in the sense that someone who paints portraits of lots of boats gets familiar with the different parts of a boat. That painter will never learn how a diesel engine works from painting portraits of boats.

        Put another way, a "real" AI would make a good chatterbot, but a good chatterbot is not too likely to ever become a real AI.

        • Re:I fail to see (Score:5, Insightful)

          by SandSpider ( 60727 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @01:39AM (#8734005) Homepage Journal
          The idea is an existential view of Artificial Intelligence. The idea was first proposed (or at least made famous) by Alan Turing, and it's known as the Turing Test. I mention to be complete, as you probably already know about the Turing Test. Even so, the Turing Test says, in short, that a computer could be considered to have artificial intelligence if it could successfully hold a conversation with human beings without being detected as a computer.

          In any case, it's a pragmatic view. The idea being that philosophers can't even find a way to determine whether humans really think. Proving that the rest of the world is more than an illusion is technically impossible without making unprovable assumptions.

          So, if you can make a computer that, from a conversational standpoint, appears completely human, why is it not intelligent?

          =Brian
          • That's not actually the test. According to "What Computers Still Can't Do" by Dreyfus, Turing first wrote about his test in 1950 in his article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." The test he orginally proposes is called the Imitation Game. It's played by three people: A man, a woman, and an interrogator who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room separate from the other two. The object of the game is for the interrogator to determine which of the other two is the man and which is th
      • Thirty years from now, we'll clearly see how this helped.

        Like we've seen how alchemy has helped us to create gold from lead?
    • "I fail to see how fooling humans into thinking that they are having a conversation with another human, when it is really a chatbot, will do anything to produce artificial intelligence."

      So don't do it.
      EOF

    • Re:I fail to see (Score:3, Insightful)

      by wornst ( 317182 )
      It may not directly produce artificial "intelligence" but the commercial applications for this type of technology is mind-blowing in my opinion. Instead of call centers staffed with people, all a company would need is a powerful enough computer to "talk" with customers. Initially the system could be used for simple newbie problems but as the software learns it would be able to handle more and more complex questions and give proper solutions. Really, as this technology matures the possibilities are endles
    • I guess that the people who design these chat bots would probably say that the bots are likely to make those "intuitive" leaps when they have gobs of information to draw from when forming conversations. I think that precious-few people in technology and science actually have the capability of forming entirely new ideas - most of the good ideas are simply based on old ones, as you mentioned. If these connections could be made by a computer, would it matter if the computer was intelligent or if it was just

    • Re:I fail to see (Score:5, Informative)

      by mrogers ( 85392 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:37PM (#8733372)
      While I was studying natural language processing I read an interesting book [amazon.com] in which Horst Hendriks-Jansen describes how, during a child's development, intelligent behaviour is built on a "scaffolding" of instinctive behaviour. For example, adults treat babies as intelligent, purposeful beings who are aware of their surroundings - we've all seen new parents interpreting baby's every burp and grimace as an attempt at conversation. In reality, most of a baby's actions are instinctive, and often unrelated to the people it's "interacting" with, but adults nevertheless feel a strong urge to respond and comment, keeping the false interaction going.

      Hendriks-Jansen argues that this misunderstanding allows the child to "bootstrap" itself into genuine interactions, by learning from the intelligent responses to its semi-random behaviour. Fast forward two years and there's undoubtedly interaction, but most of the meaning is still interpreted by the adult rather than supplied by the child - "Go park" "Do you want to go to the park today?" "Ey say mf aw sheep" "Do you think we'll see sheep at the park? What noise do sheep make?"

      What relevance does all this have for AI? If the "interactive emergence" theory is correct, computers will only become intelligent by learning to interact - bootstrapping themselves from semi-random actions, interpreted as meaningful, to genuinely meaningful interactions. This will only be possible if people have the patience to play with bots and teach them to interact, and since the urge doesn't seem to be as strong with bots as it is with babies, and the interaction starts with text rather than gurgles and winces, it will help if the bots have enough "instinctive" (ie hardcoded) conversational skills to encourage people to keep playing.

      • Re:I fail to see (Score:4, Interesting)

        by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:59PM (#8733516) Homepage Journal
        While I was studying natural language processing I read an interesting book in which Horst Hendriks-Jansen describes how, during a child's development, intelligent behaviour is built on a "scaffolding" of instinctive behaviour. For example, adults treat babies as intelligent, purposeful beings who are aware of their surroundings - we've all seen new parents interpreting baby's every burp and grimace as an attempt at conversation. In reality, most of a baby's actions are instinctive, and often unrelated to the people it's "interacting" with, but adults nevertheless feel a strong urge to respond and comment, keeping the false interaction going.

        Hendriks-Jansen argues that this misunderstanding allows the child to "bootstrap" itself into genuine interactions, by learning from the intelligent responses to its semi-random behaviour.

        Actually, the person who came up with this theory was actually Lev Vygotsky, an educator in 1930s Soviet Russia. (No "In Soviet Russia..." jokes, please.) Vygotsky was building on the research of Swiss educator Jean Piaget.

        I have seen bots "evolve" in very interesting ways when resident on IRC channels. Of course, inevitably someone with an ecchi sense of humor comes along and gives the bot a filthy new vocabulary. ^_^

        Will a carefully tended bot become sentient or even sapient? Doubtful. But they're fun to play with nonetheless.

    • If there is no dicernable difference between talking to a human and talking to a machine... then who is to say you haven't achieved the hard AI you are looking for? What does it matter if it is really "thinking" or just giving you canned responses so long as the answers are always and consistantly right?
      • I think the real question is what you want AI to do for you. If all you get AI to do is mimic the discussion of an actual human, what have you gained? We have too many humans as it is, and they all talk too much.

        Doug

  • Nice (Score:2)

    by mphase ( 644838 )
    Though this tech is always new and impressive I still long for a chatbot which has the resources to consult weather pages, stock quotes and football scores. These things are amazing but one of the short coming always seems to be a lack of resources.
    • so you saying that they should combine a chatbot with Ask Jeeves?

      • Re:Nice (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ingenuus ( 628810 )
        That's an interesting point:

        - What is the storage restrictions on a chatbot in the competition?

        - Is it allowed to google for a reasonable human response to your statements? ... i.e. basically using other past human responses as its own response.

        - This is particularly interesting because, in this way (with a large enough db like the web), a chatbot could appear to be human, but we probably wouldn't consider this AI.

        - If a chatbot reiterates something it downloads from the web, is that copyright infringem

    • Re:Nice (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JoshWurzel ( 320371 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:59PM (#8733106) Homepage
      Consulting isn't enough. What really seems to be the problem is that the resource pages keep changing the way they format their data, so it becomes impossible for a chatbot to parse without monthly updates. This week I can ask my chatbot for the score in Celebrity Jeapordy (Sean Connery wins with a wager of SUCK IT TREBEK!) and it'll return "Sean Connery won with $uckittrebek".

      Next week, when I ask the same question, it'll return "href a=blahblahblah won with a score of $%d3b" because the site it references has changed its format. I seem to notice this problem with weather programs too.

    • Re:Nice (Score:3, Informative)

      by Trejkaz ( 615352 )
      AliceBot would have been able to do it. It was designed for integration with information bases and you could put scripts in as part of your customisation. One of these scripts could easily fetch from Yahoo, parse the page, reword it in English and speak it out.

  • Where is my Lucy Liu bot? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "That is very interesting PHILLIP J FRY, how you PUT TWO THINGS TOGETHER"

  • Don't give them a Google GMAIL Account! (Score:4, Funny)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:54PM (#8733076) Journal
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of chatterbots.... No, maybe not.

    So all these chatterbots are ranting at each other - Google just creates this new offer for free mail with 1GB mailboxes, and an hour and 20 minutes later, Slashdot posts an article describing how to fill them up quickly!

  • My personal pick.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @10:57PM (#8733089) Homepage Journal
    My personal pick would have to be JabberWacky [jabberwacky.com]. Even while part of your brain is thinking that the conversation is surreal and rediculous (although not as bad as most bots), there's something... moreish... about it, and you keep on chatting. Just when you're about to leave, it tosses something out that grabs you back again. Kind of like an annoying relative.
  • Interesting. But all things are not always are not always are not always are not....

    um... I think we need some tweaking.
  • Even if someone makes a highly advanced and believable bot, isn't the idea of trying to create AI with current programming methods fundament flawed. Although I'm not a programmer and don't know the technical terms, how can something ever truly emulate human behavior if it is limited by (insert highly complicated explanation of programming basics here). I just want to point out the program will always keep the AI contained and, by design, prevent learning beyond the programs initial design. If we want to rea
    • I like that. A hybrid meathead approach to create true intelligence!
    • I think that sort of ability would require the program to be able to cross-reference with its source, and then to be able to insert instructions into itself through some sort of intermediate, or at least logical language, which it would then recompile into itself. Ideally, there would be no recompilation step, which makes one think, perhaps the human brain runs on an interpreter, so to speak?
    • RazorX90:

      I just want to point out that your meathead will always keep your (A)I contained and, by design, prevent learning beyond the meatheads initial design.

      Where is the fundamental flaw?

      Oh, and programs that are introspective can be written, and they can modify themselves, without the original programmer being involved.

      I personally don't *want* my computer to simulate a human "Gee, Ratboy, I don't feel like looking up that information right now...". And the worst would be the "sullen, adolescent" ver
    • I believe so, though their programming technique may not be in c++, but rather, a neural net. Basically this emulates the human brain, but does it in 1's and 0's. The more often a certain "circuit" is used, the stronger the connections become, and the more likely it is to fire. Conversely, the weak ones are pruned away. By exposing it to a certain situation, and "rewarding" it when it makes a correct decesion, you are teaching the computer. For instance if the you have a program to play backgammon, you save
    • Even if someone makes a highly advanced and believable bot, isn't the idea of trying to create AI with current programming methods fundament flawed.

      Only if you're trying or wanting to create a real, humanlike AI.

      Evolution of chatbot like "limited-AI" thingies will make a perfectly good user interface that doesn't try to take over the world.

  • Chat between bots? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Planky ( 761118 )
    I'd like to see a discussion between to of these bots. Could be interesting to say the least: 1, Bob: Whats your name 2, Eva: My name is Eva, whats yours 3, Bob: Bob. ... goto 1

    • Re:Chat between bots? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They actually can hold a conversation, although the topic tends to stray very, very quickly.

  • But what standard? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by autocracy ( 192714 ) <slashdot2007@sto ... .com minus berry> on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:02PM (#8733140) Homepage
    Hold a conversation with me, or with some 1337 luser? I think I can actually write the second in 5 lines of obfuscated perl...

    I think the limits of faking conversation are most defined by the limits of who you're talking with. Who is this supposed to impress anyway? At the least, I'd like to see something that fails miserably, but attempts to "learn." That'd be better than a smoke-and-mirrors anticipation of what somebody might try to say, or by constantly guiding the conversation to a pre-determined point.

  • Eliza, the classic! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nomihn0 ( 739701 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:04PM (#8733150)
    You have got to love Eliza. What a classic. It was the first chatbot ever. It was ingenious to write a psychologist chatbot - that allows it to ask questions when it, itself, is questioned. I have very fond memories of coaxing Eliza into going on dates with me when I first fooled with her about five years ago...

  • Some bots just aren't afraid to call Linus gay.. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A friend of mine created Issac.. If you ever happen to see either one of them, give them a trout-slap for this little gem...
    <Tux> Who is gay?
    <Issac> Umm...Linus Torvalds
    (Shamelessly stolen from forums.quickfry.com [quickfry.com])

  • From the paste files (Score:4, Funny)

    by Asdfghanistan ( 590625 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:04PM (#8733158) Homepage Journal
    The History of the Slashdot World
    From a mailing list written by Seth

    2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

    100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

    10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

    3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

    2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

    1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

    490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

    399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

    336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

    4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

    A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

    A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

    A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

    A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

    A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

    A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating
    the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

    A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

    A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

    A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

    A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

    A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

    A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

    A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

    A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

    A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

    A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

    A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

    A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

    A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that many of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

    A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click
  • with the eventual aim of creating true virtual personalities and artificial intelligences.

    Have you visited the average IRC channel lately..? I think most of chatbots are probably waaaay past the average person on IRC in terms of both personality and intelligence already...

  • .....a bot that can post on slashdot for me. Maybe I start to get some karama back :)

  • Old news to me (Score:5, Funny)

    by worst_name_ever ( 633374 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:10PM (#8733201)
    personalities vary from a fortune teller and a serial killer

    Great, you've just described my ex girlfriend.

  • I like Fred (Score:3, Informative)

    by focitrixilous P ( 690813 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:11PM (#8733208) Journal
    He's a forum bot over at Wackiness.org [wackiness.org], you send him personal messages and he replies with some sense. If you post at the forums with Fred as the first word, he will rehash your question, along with random phrases from all your posts at the forum, into a semi-sensical statement. Fred 2.0 [wackiness.org] is my favorite chatterbox. I even wrote some stories [wackiness.org] about his secret internet life. I leave you with the best of Fred:
    Is the short skirts attractive females tend to wear a hard subject?
    Do you think I am gonna find out THAT too?
    Gee. What, I you am goop it?
  • Finally, someone to talk to! And since they're not real, no restraining orders either.
  • with chatterboxes who needs real people? Half the time they are more interesting then my own "friends"
  • ... that if you wanted a convincing response, you'd need several elements. But first a caveat: I know nothing about this. First, for questions that have no known answer, you'd have to run the questions by ASKJEEVES, or Google, almost as is. Then, you'd have to analyze the respondant pages for the most commonly used words, and then see which words best correllate with the operative interrogative adverb (when? Summer, fly, geese). That would yield a one word reply, which you could then couch in

  • A horse? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Trejkaz ( 615352 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:22PM (#8733271) Homepage
    for(;;) { printf("Neigh."); }

  • aoliza [fury.com].

    not the same thing, but worth mentioning.

  • Two issues come to mind when one considers the wonders of AI in a chatroom:

    1. How hard can it be to fool people into thinking you're actually a person in a chatroom, most of them consist of nothing but a repetition of:

    Dude22 - whats up in here?
    Otherdude - nothing much...
    Othergal - bored.
    Dude22 - anyone wanna cyber? ... silence...

    with occasional "Free Palestine!!!!!!" spam.

    2. OK, so you've got these bots that can chat just like people. Who do they belong to? Marketing agencies? Your government? Som

  • Rod Speed, the ultimate Usenet chatbot (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oingoboingo ( 179159 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:43PM (#8733413)
    Does anyone here remember from the early days of Fidonet on dial-up BBSs, and more recently Usenet, a particularly offensive person named Rod Speed? This guy used to (and still does) post at an incredibly prolific rate, with some of the most anti-social, deliberately offensive tripe I've ever read. The posts were always so similar that it was suggested for a long time that Rod Speed was actually a bot. In fact, some people created a Rod Speed chatbot, and I swear you can't tell the difference between its responses and those of the 'real' Rod Speed.

    This guy even has his own FAQ..just go to Deja and search for "Rod Speed". He really blurs the line between chatbot and human. Rod....Rod...are you on Slashdot?!?!?

  • old skool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by man_ls ( 248470 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:47PM (#8733455)
    Anyone remember this? It was the best AI program in the world.
    My name is Doctor Sbaitso. I am here to help you.

    SAY WHATEVER IS IN YOUR MIND FREELY. OUR CONVERSATIONS WILL BE KEPT IN STRICT CONFIDANCE. MEMORY CONTENTS WILL BE WIPED AFTER YOU LEAVE.

    SO. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.

    Unfortunately, Slashcode Lameness Filter seems dead-set on not allowing me to post the exerpt from it that was always said...

  • serial killer? (Score:3, Funny)

    by myowntrueself ( 607117 ) on Wednesday March 31, 2004 @11:56PM (#8733496)
    If they got it right, one would *never* tell from chatting with it that it was the 'serial killer' chatbot.

    Thats what serial killers are like... if they programmed it to be all violent and nasty they got it *bzzzt* wrong.

    Your typical serial killer is a *nice* guy who you can *trust*.

    Trust me.

  • Quite simple (Score:3, Funny)

    by m00nun1t ( 588082 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @12:07AM (#8733566) Homepage
    From what I've seen of teen chat these days, all you need is a bot that says

    ASL? LOL

    evey minute or so and you've covered about 80% of all conversation.


    • From what I've seen of teen chat these days, all you need is a bot that says
      ASL? LOL
      evey minute or so and you've covered about 80% of all conversation.

      You forgot OMG ROFL and the positively blood-curdling LOLOLOLOLOLOL.

  • Open Source bots (Score:3, Informative)

    by fear025 ( 763732 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @12:09AM (#8733584)
    What open source chatterbots do people out there recommend?

    I've had a lot of luck with Megahal [sourceforge.net] myself.

    It was pretty easy to hack it into a telnet client to hang out on my favorite chat (we call 'her' Terry).

    My favorite thing about this one is that you can feed it a training file, and it'll almost talk intelligently. I had a lot of luck feeding 'her' snippets from Confucius and Dr. Seuss.

    The only bad thing is that 'she' is pretty easy to teach, and so now goes around all the time talking about killing Kevin!

  • It's a joke. Laugh. (Score:3, Funny)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @12:10AM (#8733589)
    See, this was nothing but an April Fool's joke. Those weren't actually chat bots... those are all actual AOL users!
  • Q16. How do you feel about 108 bot server web pages being slashdotted?

  • Any good chatbots for IRC? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Thursday April 01, 2004 @01:00AM (#8733762) Homepage Journal
    I am currently using SeeBorg [c58.ru] and I name him Homer (J. Simpsons). Most of the times he say stupid nonsense stuff, and he does learn to read IRC conversations. He records every IRC lines into a file, LINES.TXT, where he will randomly use phrases to say something. He will blurt out something one out of ten chances after someone else says something. If you call his name, then he will mostly reply back.

    I used to use Alice, but the IRC script was very buggy and tended to hog CPU so I dropped her. :)
  • Well, I've just looked at this page and they're all rubbish pretty muh on the communication front. There was a story I saw recently where some fella in the UK is making $$$ out of catching older guys chatting up kids in teenage chatrooms by having a bot pretending to be some available teenager which proceeds lets him chat the bot up, then nabs him. Now there must be some sophistication behind that - that must be the winner of this contest for sure.
    • The "fella" is Jim Wightman. Given what his "bot" does, the name of his company is rather "unfortunate" (says The Guardian) - it's Neverland Systems!

      Anyway, no one is allowed to see his paedo-catcher bot working and he recently reneged on an agreed interview with The Guardian's Bad Science column (all this info is online at www.guardian.co.uk)

      >Now there must be some sophistication behind that

      Or trickery... That's a simpler explanation!

      .
  • It's disappointing how little progress there has been since the 1960s. Most of these make Eliza look good.

  • Few Thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Phoe6 ( 705194 )
    Where is Alan [a-i.com]in the list? He is most Human like bot,I have ever talked with. The most interesting aspect is that he learns from the Conversation and does not need only a bot master to program. This is somewhat recursive right? You chat with Bot and Bot becomes intelligent with each conversation. Thats how it should go and thats how we may find a bot which actually knows many detailed facts because many people are taking with it and many persons are providing their Intelligence. In one of the previous posts,

  • loebner prize (Score:2, Informative)

    by blue_adept ( 40915 )
    This contest remind me of the loebner prize, the annual contest to see whether a chat robot can pass an implementation of the turing test - with prizes of 3,000, 25,000, and 100,000 for 3rd, 2nd, and 1st prize respectively.

    Seems that the loebner contest has fallen into troubles lately, however, with fewer and fewer organizations willing the host the competition, ostensibly due to the eccentricities of loebner himself, at least according to this very interesting article [salon.com].

    So it's good to see more conte

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