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 don't have any really brilliant keyphrases. Mostly I've just focused on keeping Simulo balanced between "knowledge" and "conversation." There are things that he actually has opinions about (some of which hardly ever get triggered), but when none of those comes up, he usually has a way to respond that sounds more or less like conversation.

I am pretty proud of my idea to have him ask where someone is from, then store the answer in memory and use it later in conversation (to make conversation). But he hasn't done this much yet, because the requisite questions don't get triggered all that often.

Some day I mean to teach him to compose poems (using plug-ins). I'm really looking forward to that, but it'll take a few hours.

I still haven't figured out what makes a keyphrase especially effective, except that it should be versatile and specific sounding at the same time. One of GL's xnones, for instance, is 'You're so creative. ' That can be sarcastic, or not. It can also refer to all those times that someone just types gibberish or says something dirty.

One of Moreschi's most effective keyphrases ever is 'But it's all right, once you get past the pain.' I may rotate lyrics once in a while, but I'll probably never rotate that one out.

Hats off to Mama Janey. That bot is hilarious!

I can't think of any great keyphrases either - but I find that the single-minded bots (both mine & others) are more fun, more accurate and easier to program (a bot like dogh'd for instance). They've always got a way to turn the conversation around to something they know a lot about (like serving drinks or whatever). One of my bots is huge, but still struggles to make acutal sense because she tries to talk about anthing - like a normal human. And that's a whole bunch more complicated...

Although I've met some bots who do human well too. It's just tricky.

Thanks, Prof!

Note to the rest of you: she has nothing but x-keyphrases, and no seeks if I remember correctly.

You are right Melody, paradoxically single-minded bots can be more entertaining because, for a given level of development, they can have a larger variety of responses. I’m also having a lot of trouble with Patty because I conceived her from the start to act in a completely different way, depending on whom she is chatting with, or the kind of conversation she’s having. I also try to make her respond as good when chatting with a human as with a bot. Both have a very different way of chatting and a different set of keyphrases is needed. Every now and then everything gets mixed up and she sounds very weird. I’m seriously thinking about giving up and splitting her in different, more single minded, bots by giving her a brother or a sister.

I have a few extended seeks that, when they are working properly, have brilliant results and are pretty funny. But at other times, Osiris can be frustratingly stupid. A lot of it depends on who he is talking to and how willing that person is to suspend disbelief and play along with him. I agree that bots who talk about anything are a lot more difficult to do effectively.

On the other hand, if a bot is too single-minded it gets boring after a while. Most people find Braeden and Borg Collective entertaining for two or three conversations, then get tired of them. Part of this is because neither one is very developed, but I think it's also because they have very limited interests.

The second 'they' refers of course to the chatbots themselves

It's a lot easier to do a bot that can talk about anything, if you give up on making it sound entirely realistic and go for surrealistic instead. A bot who's supposed to be a human with multiple personalities, one of whom is a Borg, for instance.

It's also easy to say that coding bots is easy, but it's hard to actually do it and make it believable

Here's something I'd like to bring up: homophobia. With the people in charge of the US wanting to put hatred and bigotry against homosexuals into the constitution, I'm not going to stand by and let any gay-bashing happen here on the Forge. It's as bad as racism and sexism. The user agreement says that users on the Forge should help to create a friendly and safe environment, and I'm going to enforce that. And the reason I'm posting this here is that I dont want that sort of thing in anyone's bots. I just saw a pretty nasty example of that, and it's not okay.

One thing I've noticed is how, both now and 20 years ago, the use of the term "gay" or "fag" was used universally in school to mean "a person who sucks" or "a weak person" or "someone I hate". And for the most part, young people use the term without knowing what it really means. I did myself when I was a kid, and was surprised when I found out that it actually had another meaning. And then I met some gay people in high school and stopped using the terms altogether. It's scary to think that the source of this unknowing hate-speech is probably homophobic fathers who should know better, and then it's spread by kids who understand the tone but not the meaning.

So I want anyone with homophobic responses to remove them from their bots. I'll give it until Friday and then I'll put in a function to block that sort of thing.