Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

I guess mine would be that I programmed random sentence generators LONG LONG ago on an old Atari computer that used 5 1/4" floppies and those weird cartridges. (Remember LOGO? Yep, we had that too. ) I don't know that this confers any special advantages, but it does help me keep the random aspect in mind that's so important to my bot's personality(ies).

P.S. Doly, you're one of the best non-native English speakers I know of.

I pursued creative writing for a long time, and always enjoyed music and playing with computers. But I think the largest influence is that when growing up I was always watching people, wondering why they did the things they did, what motivated them, and what experiences lay behind their actions.

I've noticed a great affinity for being musical in the botmasters here. I wonder if it's a kind of personality-technology connection. Music can affect people's emotions, experiences. It's at once mathematical and emotional, and so is the simulation of personality going on in AI.

I have a background in computer programming, and I read the book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. It talks a lot about AI, and that's what got me interested.

My daily job has nothing to do with this, but I always was fascinated by the talking computer programmes in Space Odyssey 2001, Star Trek and Westworld... Simulations and AI always peek my interest, and I simply LOVE music and movies...

I'm majoring in Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, but I don't think it's made any difference in my bot-mastering skills. I feel that a flair for writing, conversation skills and creativity are far more important, so long as you are on *this* end of the Personality Forge (i.e. are not comming up with the algirithms yourself).

I've played with computers since basically the first "useable" pc came out (386) which was in '91. I've always liked the sci-fi computer programs too actually I was recently working on the equivalent of one I re-discovered AI whilst trying to make my own computer assistant.. Harder than it looks PS I love music, I am even in the school Concert and Jazz band

My immediate family (myself included) has always done some singing, like in plays or in front of the church. I played clarinet for many years in the school marching band. I gave that up and now dabble in a variety of other instruments.

I have tried to get better with musical instruments and even compose a little, but I don't have the dedication for those things the way I do for the written word. I don't know why.

I'm also pretty good at drawing, but it is a pain in the butt for me while writing is not. Writing is equally hard work, but somehow I don't mind.

Wasn't the first usable PC the Commodore64?

Shady has a point. My last year in college, I finally got a computer, and it was a 286. It had no mouse port, and hardly any program would run on it because the monitor was monochrome. Let's just say I still have some catching up to do.....

I had a Commodore 128 3-in-1 computer. It had 128 mode, 64 mode, and CPM mode.

I started with a Spectrum with 48K. My first PC was the 086. Green monitor, no hard drive, games that were on the same level as the Spectrum... Those were the good old times!

Eugene,

GEB has always been my favorite book since I first poked through it about 20 years ago. I've read it cover to cover twice, and some sections quite a bit more. Good stuff!