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

For when you're really really lone

[Anonymous Coward]

And reading Slashdot isn't enough.

lol!

[dealsites]

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!

Re:lol!

[dealsites]

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!


--
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where?

[AnonymousCowheart]

they have HAL, Robot, and Mr. Roboto, but where, where the heck is Johnny Five!?

Re:where?

[zakezuke]

...where the heck is Johnny Five!?

disassembled

And no one mentioned...

[Doches]

...the word "Turing"

This all seems a bit pointless

[zyridium]

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...

Re:This all seems a bit pointless

[anon*127.0.0.1]

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 fail to see

[plnrtrvlr]

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

[Raindance]

"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

[GigsVT]

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

[wornst]

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.

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.

Re:I fail to see

[MsGeek]

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.

Re:I fail to see

[SandSpider]

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

Don't give them a Google GMAIL Account!

[billstewart]

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!

Re:Nice

[JoshWurzel]

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.

Eliza, the classic!

[Nomihn0]

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...

From the paste files

[Asdfghanistan]

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

Old news to me

[worst_name_ever]

personalities vary from a fortune teller and a serial killer

Great, you've just described my ex girlfriend.

Rod Speed, the ultimate Usenet chatbot

[oingoboingo]

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?!?!?

Open Source bots

[fear025]

What open source chatterbots do people out there recommend?

I've had a lot of luck with Megahal 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!