Creating a Better Chatbot Through Crowdsourcing

An anonymous reader writes "MIT Technology Review reports on a chatbot built at the University of Rochester that is capable of high quality, human-level conversation — thanks to software called Chorus that turns to Amazon's crowdsourcing service Mechanical Turk to generate and evaluate replies to a human's statements and questions. No one person is ever acting as the bot, instead multiple workers suggest responses that are then voted on to select the best. The crowd workers contributing change frequently, but Chorus also has them keep a running list of important contextual information to give the bot a kind of memory of a conversation's history. The researchers say Chorus-style chat bots could out-perform fully automated assistants such as Siri, while being considerably cheaper than a true concierge service."

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Creating an earlier post through FrostPosting

[Anonymous Coward]

"AC Technology Review reports on a frostpost built at the University of Linux that is capable of high quality, human-level posting— thanks to software called Anus that turns to Goatse's crowdsourcing service Mechanical Penis to generate and evaluate replies to a human's posts and tardiness. No one person is ever acting as the poster, instead multiple posters suggest responses that are then voted on to select the widest anus. The posters contributing change frequently, but Anus also has them keep a running list of important rectal information to give the bot a kind of memory of a conversation's gaping asshole. The researchers say Anus-style posters could out-perform fully automated assistants such as Dr. Stephen Jobs, while being considerably cheaper than a true transexual hooker or iPhone."