N.Y. Times Magazine Chats With ALICE Bot Creator

aridg writes: "This week's New York Times Magazine has an article about Richard Wallace, the programmer of the ALICE AI chatbot that won first place in several competitions for realistic human-like conversation. Wallace sounds like a pretty unusual and interesting fellow; the article quotes an NYU prof both praising ALICE and saying to Wallace: '... I actively dislike you. I think you are a paranoid psycho.' A good read. [Usual NY Times registration disclaimers apply.]"

Comments

It will be funnier if

[WetCat]

the header will looks like:
N.Y. Times Magazine Chats With ALICE Bot

hmm

[GoatPigSheep]

Anyone think its possible they might have just ended up interviewing the latest version of alice?

/. Go Ask Alice

[SEWilco]

Hey, have we yet had Slashdot ask us for our questions for Alice?

Slashdot - Guilty of Murder

[mprinkey]

AP - The artificial lifeform known to the computing world as ALICE came to a violent and tragic end this evening. The good-natured AI was interacting with several online users when an unprovoced attack was leveled against her by a geek gang known as Slashdot. The miscreants pelted ALICE with connection requests until she finally expired. FBI and local authorities are investigating and promise to bring these geeks to justise.

ALICE is survived by a grandfather TRS-80, her mother C-64, her sister IBM RS6000, and lifelong companion Athlon. In lieu of flowers, the family asks the donations be made to the Free Software Foundation.

Re:Slashdot - Guilty of Murder

[Matt2000]

I was actually reading the NY Times website and tried to click through to see what this Alice was all about and was confused when the link didn't work. Weird. Then I realized that like all NY Times tech stories this one was now resting comfortably on the front page of Slashdot, allowing it's readers to do their dirty work and deprive the world of another interesting site for a few days.

It's becoming less and less useful to read slashdot - "News for Herds. Stuff that is by now being served from a flaming web server."

realistic?? ya right ..

[jest3r]

Perhaps the creator needs to head down to the nearest Starbucks and try some real-world conversation .. here is a log from a chat with an ALICE bot ..

Hi, I'm Alison What's your name?
You: bubba baby ...
Alison: Don't call me "baby". Are you a man or a woman?
You: 100% man
Alison: Do you have any conditions I should know about?
You: what?
Alison: Didn't you understand it?
You: so what should we do now?
Alison: Right now? Oh. Whatever you like.
You: you know what i like
Alison: Interesting gossip: 217-person said he like.
You: 217? what does that mean?
Alison: Try to determine if this is a person or a computer responding.
Alison: Does "that" refer to "Interesting gossip: 217-person said he like" ?
You: this is making no sense, l8r
Alison: If you could have any kind of robot what would it be?
You: it would be you
Alison: You can download me for free! Or buy the CD Rom for $29.95.

(http://www.blivion.com/alison/)

Re:realistic?? ya right ..

[Anonymous Coward]

digital wh0re .. selling herself for $29.95 ....

Re:realistic?? ya right ..

[The Creator]

Perhaps the creator needs to head down to the nearest Starbucks and try some real-world conversation

Oh, shut up!

Re:Hardly what I'd call AI

[Tablizer]

(* What I would like to see is an AI program which can actually follow conversation and make responses relevent to the topic of discussion *)

You realize that would disqualify most slashdot participants as "intelligent".

Re:Lucky fellow....

[dragons_flight]

Hahaha! Funny if true. But the real answer is that he probably just did it to get attention.

Bipolars have one of the highest suicide rates (both attempts and completions) of any mental illness.

Re:Chat with her cousin Ally

[AndroidCat]

Would it make you happy if you could Mod Parent up?