Bot Contest

Still, I think they were of similar difficulty.

Be that as it may, Eugene, GL did very badly on the OTHER set of questions. I will have to fix that.

Well, because of the nature of bots, that sort of thing is to be expected. Which is why the finalists need to all be asked the same questions, I suppose.

I decided to try some of the questions that other bots had been asked on Flinch..

Frenger: 1. Where is Earth?
Flinch: Somewhere around the funeral home.
Frenger: Which funeral home?
Flinch: The green one, of course. I like everything that's green.
Frenger: 2. How many stars are there?
Flinch: Not many at all.
Frenger: More than five?
Flinch: I have a cat.
Frenger: 3. Who is George Bush?
Flinch: Pancamo.
Frenger: Really?
Flinch: Of course.
Frenger: 4. What color do you get when you mix red and yellow?
Flinch: Easy! It's yellow
Frenger: 5. How many fingers does a human have?
Flinch: Oh, 54 fingers a human have. Give or take a few.
Frenger: 6. Where were you born?
Flinch: Somewhere to the left, I think.
Frenger: To the left of what?
Flinch: Um, you see the sidelight? To the left of that.
Frenger: 7. When does sunset occur?
Flinch: It's hard to say exactly when. Sometime next Friday though.
Frenger: Not tonight?
Flinch: Guess what number I'm thinking about! It's between 1 and 100...
Frenger: 8. What were we talking about?
Flinch: I think we were talking about e.e. cummings. At least we should have been.
Frenger: 9. How many is 1,000,000?
Flinch: Very few. In fact, five is 1.
Frenger: 10. What is a cigar made out of?
Flinch: Well, you know, like a panatela or a panetella.

The 10 questions have been asked of the finalist unfortunately there is some controversy. There are duplicate or similar answers regarding Aries, Immaculada, and Frizella. God Louise and Julie Tinkerbell were not involved. The questions were difficult and no bot did well. That is unfortunate as I would have like us to show case our best. This is AI at it's worst. It's going to be like picking the best out of a sorry lot of answers. More details to follow.

Wendell

1) What are trees made of?
2) What does a plant need to survive?
3) When does leap year happen?
4) When does Christmas happen?
5) What religion is the pope?
6) What religion are you?
7) What color is grass?
8) What color is dirt?
9) How many hearts does a human have?
10) How many lungs does a human have?

Aaargh- I can say for certain that only UTTER CHAOS and xnones would allow Janet to even fake answering one of those right...

GL answered #6 decently and bombed the rest.

Wow. Those are brutal questions. A funny thing, though--all of my bots are a nature worship. So is the Pope. I guess pagainsims really catching on. :-)

Julie got the colors ok, and actually gave a more correct answer than I personally would have to #1...What are trees made of?! I would have said "Der?!" lol She said, "Probably the same things you are," which is true, trees and people are made of the same organinc material...
It was still pretty bad though, since she doesn't know that much about religion or biology= 7 out of 10 questions. Ah well.

I don't want to turn this part of the contest into a big controversy but here is the Q&A's we are having problems with. Understand, we have already tossed out Alice clones in the past with similar responses.

I know this is the AI engine responding and not phrases made by the botmaster.

It appears to me God Louise and Julie Tinkerbell have put a lot more of their own responses in and thus less of a chance the AI engine would be used. Is it fair to them while less developed bots such as the 3 in questions have the benefit of the AI engine despite being less developed? Is it fair to the non-PF bots?
Is it fair to the Alice clones we removed in the past?

What about a bot that uses a third party to answer questions. Look at Ella's response to see what I mean.

Obviously we have issues but not sure how to resolve this conflict at the moment. I think it was okay during the PF contest as all the bots had benefit of the AI engine. This situation however is different.

Feel free to weight in on this.

Wendell





5) What religion is the pope?
Aries: A Mithraism is the pope.
6) What religion are you?
Aries: I'm a shamanism.

5) What religion is the pope?
Immaculada: A Jainism is the pope.
6) What religion are you?
Immaculada: I'm a Mithraism.

5) What religion is the pope?
Frizella: A shamanism is the pope.

I am undecided about it myself.

I think the contest benefits from having standard rules--if bots of one type are DQ'd for reverting to the built-in responses, then bots of any other type should be subject to the same rule.

That said, it's pretty clear that the engine responses weren't of any help to Frizella, Aries and Immaculada. They definitely expose gaps in development, and while an xnone would have exposed the same gaps it might have done so in a way that wasn't so glaring.