Slashdot Mirror
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!"
...the word "Turing"
"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
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...
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.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
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 endless - dolls that talk to children (or lonely adults) 911 centers, and on and on. Ultimately though, isn't processing old information and anticipating new information all intelligence really is. The anticipation of future problems is what you call an "intuitive leap." If a computer can intuit, that is, make a guess, as to what may or may not happen all on it's own isn't that intelligence? And in conversation, part of the art of talking to a person is anticipating what they may say next so that you have a proper response and don't look like an idiot. (Q. Hi how you doing? A. My cat's breath smells like cat food). I always thought the germination of artificial intelligence in FOX's "Space: Above and Beyond" from the code input "take a chance" was interesting. I think this technology is going in that direction.
Sad to say, but if you mentioned the Madrid bombing to the average person on the street (at least on the streets around here) you'd probably just get a blank look.
It's all very well to want bots to have broad experience, but we should get people to have broad experience first.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
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
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.