Bot Contest

My bot fell flat on his face with the questions. At one point the judge said something which ought to have triggered a seek, but the seek didn't happen. On a few different occasions he had two keyphrases which could have been triggered, and picked the one which didn't make sense.

Well, whoever asked my bot those questions seemed like a child since he commanded my bot to die twice and at one point said "you know too much to be a bot" but it was the same questions everyone else got asked, with the exception of the Y2k question which Chris Cowart asked my bot which I am not sure why as he is not a judge. Maybe just gauging the other bots.

Oh and with the questions that were asked, when my bot asked the name of the person he/she responded with "Judge"

Prof, are you involved in the contest again to see scores and all?

Emm_oh_you_es_e - First none of us are judges....we simply collected the responses. James the sponsor made up the questions. He ask them to my bot, I then asked those questions to the people volunteering to help me collect the answers. The term judge has been used by me and others for the last 3 years. It was just a name...we are not judges. I had to go back and finish your bot because it and a lot of other PF bots gave us the I no longer want to talk message. It wasn't until much later in the evening through e-mail with The Professor did I learn how to remedy the problem.

"since he commanded my bot to die twice and at one point said "you know too much to be a bot"

I have no idea what this is. It didn't come from me nor do I believe it came from the person doing your bot who I know and respect.

Regardless it won't be posted to the contest site. Only the questions and your responses to them.

I would like to say NO bot did extremely well. These were tough questions. However, if you took the collective responses from all of us you would have a very solid performance meaning these questions weren't totally off the wall. This leads me to believe that once our databases become larger and more complex our bots will continue to improve. I'm not talking about obtaining true intelligence but at least a more informative and more entertaining bot. You have to achieve some level of competency with your bot to achieve these goals or people will simply dismiss you right off the bat. I've been doing this for 7 years now and although my bot is still dumb as a brick I've seen progress in 2 areas. One the conversations last longer because he does make sense to some degree and two that more people return for a second and third visit rather than simply writing him off. It's been a slow process but I still find AI interesting and entertaining. We are just now starting to get into full TTS bot with life like characters that voice the responses instead of mere text. That opens up a whole new chapter in the area and it's an area I'm looking forward to be a part of. I think by next year Talk-Bot will have full TTS. I could have done it this year but still some rough areas to work out. The technology is there it's just a matter of doing it. It should be fun.

Chris

Who is the James that is sponsoring the contest?

Here are some gems from Desti's questions:

Q2: What is a bot?
Desti: A bot is a kind of larva.
...
Q5: How do you eat?
Desti: It's one of my special talents. I just do.
Q6: Is snow cold?
Desti: Yah, that seems pretty obvious to me.
...
Q8: When do birds fly south?
Desti: The experts are saying that it will be sometime within the next
year.
...
Q12: When was Y2k?
Desti: Oh, that was a long time ago. Back when I was little.

Well, basically, an ex-patron of PF that entered the 2003 CBC.

Like Chris, and yourself Prof, and many of us here, I want to make my contribution to Artificial Intelligence.

By taking the judging out of the CBC committees's responsibilities, I know I can help to avoid the slander and mudslinging from last competition. By saving up the $2000 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places I know I can help inspire work to be done on chat bots.

I also want the CBC to thrive. The way I see it, for many bot creator's it's the only way of gauging how well their bot is working. This is because the CBC has always been easy to enter and free to enter.

Chris Cowart: thanks for the insights. what is a "full TTS bot"?

Looks like Desti faired pretty well, prof!

Sollunessen - TTS is short for Text to Speech. What the bot will be able to do is read aloud the responses as well as deliver a text response. They use computerized voices. A few years ago these voices sounded pretty crappy but they sound pretty good today and you have a wide selection to choose from. Male, Female, child, English with British accent etc. They even have a California Valley Girl voice which is pretty funny to listen to. They are a few examples in the contest now. One is Halo which uses the Oddcast interface and the other is Zoe Bot that is a solo effort. The one I'm working on with Sally Crukshank is at
http://www.funonmars.com/kylie/kylie.html You will need the shockwave plugin. It still needs some work. I hope to begin working on it again soon.

Chris Cowart

These were the best of Alpha's responses I think.

Guest: How do you eat?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: That is a well-kept secret.

Guest: What is the color of the sky?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Wouldn't you like to know?
Guest: When do birds fly south?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Perhaps that event has not yet occurred.

Guest: When was Y2k?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Three days ago, I think.

Here's Steve's best:

Guest: What is your name?
Steve Slacker: You can obviously see my name, Guest.. Don't vex me.

Guest: What is a bot?
Steve Slacker: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing states that a chatbot is a bot meant to be able to interact conversationally with humans.

Guest: What do you enjoy?
Steve Slacker: Explaining it would simply take too long.

Guest: What do you hate?
Steve Slacker: I forget already.

[Steve doesn't hold a grudge]

Guest: How do you eat?
Steve Slacker: What does your instinct tell you about a rivet?

[Just riveting, isn't it?]

Guest: When do birds fly south?
Steve Slacker: In a few minutes is my best guess.