Chatterbox Challenge Contest Underway

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!"

Comments

Re:I fail to see

[mrogers]

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. 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.