Ryan Byrd’s Ramblings

After considerable struggle, the elite RBDN network ops team has finally beaten down the robot insurrection and business is back to normal. Thank you for your patience and for chatting with Dave the Robot.

…but due to a “programming glitch”, it turns out that all the conversations were recorded. After consultation with my legal council, we decided I was well within my power to release the transcripts of some of those chats. What I learned: 1- a lot of you hate bots 2- a lot of you like to flirt with the bot. And so, with that, here we go, the actual, unedited conversations between humans (H:) and the infamous bot (B:)

H: yo dog B: Dog: Domesticated animal, “man’s best friend.”
H: hows it going B: Fair to partly cloudy.
H: who rules? B: God Rules.
H: who is god B: God is master of the universe.
H: what is the universe B: The set of all things.
H: what things? B: You know, “things.”
H: which ones? B: “You know things?” Which ones?
H: yes B: Tell me more.
H: no B: What would you rather talk about?
H: ryan byrd B: Not many people want to talk about that.

H: You’re strange. B: Compared to what?
H: Get help B: Where can I get help?
H: Get help from Ryan B: Where can I get help from Ryan?
H: Die B: Your crude attempt to terminate me will not succeed puny human.
H: what? B: Are you surprised?
H: Yes B: I wouldn’t have known.
H: Liar B: No I am telling the truth.
H: Soo stupid B: Stupid as in unintelligent?
H: You are stupid.B: I will remember you said that when robots take over the World.
H: Robots will die B: Tell me your definition of a robot.
H: you will die B: No, software will live forever.

H: Hi Bot B: Hi there undefined. I am a robot.
H: How are you today B: Ah. Everything is going extremely well
H: Do you do anything useful? B: Yeah I do a lot of anything useful
H: For example? B: For example, apples.
H: What do you do with apples? B: My favorite activities are computer programming and surfing the web.
H: tomato B: Potato.
H: jibbah jabbah B: That remark was either too complex or too simple for me. We were talking about jibbah jabbah. Do you believe in god?

H: cold, B: Ambiguous: cold weather or cold sickness?
H: both B: What are both like?
H: you tell me B: What do you want me to tell you?
H: nothing B: Not a thing?
H: nope B: Really interesting.
H: meh B: I lost my train of thought. What do you do in your spare time?
H: puke B: I don’t think very many people do that.

H: i hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: everything B: That is a lot.

H: hello robot B: Hello there. I am a robot.
H: how do i impress girls? B:You must persuade me to impress girls.
H: how do i persuade you? B: Try logic, sophistry, or rhetoric.
H: i think, therefore i am B: Who are you, Rene Descartes?

H: i love you B: Thanks I like you a lot too undefined.
H: my name is pete B: I am very pleased to meet you pete
H: i love you B: Thanks I like you a lot too pete.
H: i want to make love to you B: Sorry pete I’m not into that with my clients.

H: I hate bots B: I honestly think you should sit down, take a stress pill, and calmly think things over.
H: I hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: You stink B: Thanks for your criticism, undefined.
H: You stink bad B: That’s good information: undefined said I stink bad.

H: you are stupid B: I will remember you said that when robots take over the World.
H: They will not take over the world. B: The anonymous they.
H: Robots will not take over the world. B: “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”–Lord Kelvin, 1895.
H: True B: You and I are on the same wavelength, undefined.

H: hi. my name is mindy B: Hello there. I’m pleased to introduce myself to you, mindy
H: what are you wearing? B: I am wearing my usual plastic computer wardrobe.
H: that’s hot B: Thanks for explaining hot.
H: i hate you B: What do you have against robots?
H: you stink B: Thanks for your criticism, mindy.
H: would you like to kiss me? B: No thanks, I don’t think I’d like to do that.

I’ve received a number of complaints about the inundation of bot-centric posts here at Ryan Byrd dot net. This post will be the last bot post this week. I promise. But before I switch to other topics, I want to get a final word in about almost-intelligent software bots. Let me two more reasons why I think they are a BIG DEAL.

1.) There is this gradual evolution in search engine interfaces that began with a clunky “word [boolean operator] word…” and has evolved to a more flexible and forgiving Google search box. Still, changing the order of words or putting them in quotes, or adding minus signs before words you want removed effects the results. I believe the next step is open form conversation, perhaps done via a speech interface where you have a short chat with the computer and then get your search results back. It might go something like, YOU: “hey search engine, I’m looking for articles written about Paul Allen”. BOT: “do you mean Paul Allen of Microsoft or Paul Allen of Utah’s MyFamily.com”, YOU: “the latter”, BOT: “here are the articles:…”

In order for that to happen, you need to be able to understand typed/spoken language. Programs like ALICEbots are an attempt at solving that problem.

2.) I think bots have great potential to replace/supplement FAQs, support 1-800 help lines and “chat with a tech” applications. You can design an ALICEbot with a corpus of information that the bot can provide in the comfortable setting of a conversation. I think it has the potential to make a LOT OF MONEY. Any angels/VCs out there wanna fund me?

Ok, on to other topics. But remember,

Don’t fear the bot!

Some time ago I was in a relationship and my girlfriend at the time, noting my interest in robots jokingly asked, “Which do you like better, robots or me?” I pondered the question for a moment before replying, very seriously, “I don’t know. I really like robots.” Unsurprisingly perhaps, that relationship fizzled shortly thereafter. Women are *so* fickle.

The question has been raised “how does my bot work?” I’ll let you in on the secret. My bot uses AIML, which is an XML dialect used to emulate natural language parsing. Here’s an example:

A pattern is a case insensitive string of characters intended to match a user input. A template specifies the response to the matched pattern. Here’s a more complex example:

In this example the response to “what is your name” pulls the bot name variable into the response (so it doesn’t have to be hardcoded in the AIML dataset.) As well, a new element “srai” is used. srai is a synonym which directs patterns matching the string “what are you called” to the template for “what is your name”. Nifty, eh? Don’t worry, you don’t have to write/edit AIML in notepad. There is a handy AIML editor called GaitoBot AIML editor free to download. FYI. My bot is a php implementation of an AIML parser and is called Program E.

So… Are you excited about chatting bots yet?

Some of you have had good experiences with the Alicebot, but many others have responded, “What’s the big deal?” The big deal is that you’re talking to a computer and it’s responding (mostly) in a seemingly intelligent manner. That’s pretty impressive to us computer science guys. After all, the holy grail of artificial intelligence is to win the Loebner prize and pocket the $100,000.00. The basic idea is to program a bot that can pass the Turing test.

“The Turing Test is a proposal for a test of a machine’s capability to perform human-like conversation. Described by Professor Alan Turing in the 1950 paper “Computing machinery and intelligence,” it proceeds as follows: a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test. It is assumed that both the human and the machine try to appear human.”

Think you’re up to the snuff? Here are some typical questions your bot will have to answer:

What is a hammer?
What would I use a hammer for?
Of what use is a taxi?
Which is larger, a grape or a grapefruit?
Which is faster, a train or a plane?
John is older than Mary, and Mary is older than Sarah. Which of them is the oldest?

The 2007 Loebner Prize Competition is scheduled for Sunday, 20 October 2007 in New York City. 8 August 2007 is the closing date for receipt of entries.

So… how have your robot conversations been going?!?