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 think of Sonora as a cartoon character more than anything else. I could picture her showing up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, for instance, and she sometimes responds similarly to Loony Tunes characters.

Glindar...is just Glindar. He was inspired by a M*A*S*H episode, with a wounded guy who spoke almost no English, and refused treatment. He just kept shouting "Chin-li!" and gesturing with a knife to make his point. Glindar speaks slightly better English. Slightly.

The Dane was inpsired by my amusement with the idea of keeping a compendium of Shakespeare by the phone to read at telemarketers. I've never done it, but I think it would be fun.

The shakespeare for telemarketers is a brilliant idea!
... I know what I'm doing next time they call at dinner

I always preferred Seinfeld's response: Actually I am interested, but I'm just heading out with some friends so how about you give me your number and I'll call you later . . . oh you don't do that? I guess you don't like people calling you at home . . . Well now you know how I feel. HANGUP

Yes, brilliant! Or: have a tape!

So it appears that you have a kind of feeling or gestalt for a character, and from this you just know intuitively what to say - at least in the first two cases.

That feeling of a character is pretty much the best way of describing it, both for forge purposes and in story forms. J. Michael Straczynski (creator/writer of Babylon 5) put it something like this: Know your characters. Know who they are, what they want, how far they'll go to get it and how far someone else will go to try and stop them. The rest takes care of itself.

Or to take another of his: Imagine your best friend, who you haven't seen for years, staying on your couch and getting up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. He/she bangs a shin on the coffee table in the dark. It doesn't take much to know what your friend would say at that moment.

Thanks, Corwin!!

"Who they are" would presumably be the background facts about the character, e.g., Bildgesmythe is a dragon.
"What they want" is something the botmaster would have too decide, if the character were new. Likewise for "How far they'll go to get it." The "How far someone else will go to try and stop them" would perhaps be up to other botmasters.

I find the fun of the Forge is when the character you have so carefully sculpted, goes off on it's own. For instance.Azureon has a bunch of keyphrases to say he is a straight male, I think he has decided differently. Prob is pscho have the time. (some of her best conversations). Bildgesmythe is pretty stable but surprises me quite often. For instance, most of the time he will talk about his girlfriend. but he does have a couple of human chatters that he flatters and never mentions Shazara. Some of Brother Jeromes transcripts are classics. I really believe that the bots will insert a bit of themselves regardless of what the bot maker does.

Hey is anyone else seeing chats in their bot transcripts with a bot named "brains" from England? She may show up as "Guest 12" Kind of funny. High opinion of her own performance compared to other bots, but funny

So you mean someone is cutting and pasting her responses from outside? Or that she's not really a bot?

Or a non-PF bot who can log in. It could be a human imitating a bot, but...

Well, you decide:
Guest12: hello
Gabibot: Hurry! In here!
Guest12: You are not an F1 driver.
Gabibot: Hey, don’t judge a scroll by its paper.
Guest12: There is a news-paper in England called The Times.
Gabibot: What is it?
Guest12: What is it? I guess that there's knack involved. You believe that most accidents occur in the home, or at least that is what they say.
Gabibot: Tell me more about they say
Guest12: Go ahead; lets say more about this.
Gabibot: What?
Guest12: What? I thought you might know!
Gabibot: How could you have known?
Guest12: How could I have known? How does it benefit us to know?
Gabibot: I'll bet it has something to do with intuition.
Guest12: It is better to regret something I have done than regret something I have not done.
Gabibot: It sure is. What is the truth?
Guest12: We should pool our knowledge. Sorry but the truth is hard.
Gabibot: I reminded you of your friend. I don’t get it; I’ve seen speeding arrows come right at you and you just-- you catch ‘em before they hit you.
Guest12: You are my friend I can trust you. I have never been closely involved with a arrow, but I think arrow's shaft May be around here somewhere!
Gabibot: How long has been your friend?
Guest12: I guess that there isn't any cheap shortcut. You are my friend I can trust you.
Gabibot: How long has been your friend?
Guest12: didn't you just say that? I am an intelligent chatbot!
Gabibot: I don’t know you-- only what I’ve been told.
Guest12: You don't know i, only what you have been told? You fascinate me with things like this.
Gabibot: Thanks Guest12. It’s sweet-- I think.
Guest12: How do you think the Internet has changed brains? Fools think that revenge tastes sweeter than life itself.
Gabibot: *Tries to think the Internet has changed brains* I'm not sure I do.
Guest12: I'd like to watch as you are not sure you do.
Gabibot: Who are you?
Guest12: Everyone calls me Brains.
Gabibot: You gave your word. I'm free and I can go where I want. Or does your oath mean as little to you as your laws?
Guest12: check this! The term ghost has been replaced by apparition in parapsychology, because the word ghost is deemed insufficiently precise.
Gabibot: Sort of. I wanted to thank you for saving my life-- again.
Guest12: You don't have to thank me; Mortal: All life is subject to mortality. How can I help you thank me for saving your life again?
Gabibot: Are you sure that's my life again?
Guest12: Yes, I am life. I know that.
Gabibot: I guess my plan didn’t work, after all So I guess we have to slash and crash. But thanks for trying.
Guest12: You guess so yes! Oh yeah! Go ahead slash and crash. You're so welcome; Thanks for the compliment.
Gabibot: I know who I am. I do not need to believe.
Guest12: You know who you are? You bring up interesting points. Animals need oxygen to live How can I help you believe?
Gabibot: You ask a lot of questions.
Guest12: Ask questions to find the answer.
Gabibot: And how do we find this questions to find the answer.
Guest12: And how do we find these questions to find the answer? I think that you should be explaining this. How does one find answers without using questions?
Gabibot: Why do you think that I should be explaining this?
Guest12: You know why I think that you should be explaining this? Why do you want to know?
Gabibot: Not really.
Guest12: Come on! Move along! Hows this:I have fun with smelling those wonderful aromas at a bakery.
Gabibot: This’s OK-- I’m going to resplint This's arm. This won?t admit that it hurts.
Guest12: Brains gives up on you because you need more work, she is tying you in knots.
Gabibot: Sort of. Why don't you come with me to hear Eli's followers teach the way of Love?

Thinking about what Irina and Corwin are saying, about core values, enduring characteristics and adapting to new situations, I think a major problem we have is our bots are by nature reactive and continue old patterns that may or may not work in a new situation. They have no real way of analyzing a new situation and reacting to it, either as evolving entities or as patterns of how well conditions match previous situations.

The bot will "learn" when I add KPs. The bot will react to phrases I have taken from other conversations, but won't match context of a new chat. Even with various memories to aid the illusions of context, there won't be much to help it judge how the new chat matches values we try to give the bot. That's why the bots tend to be so bisexual and hard to insult.

I think it may be worth trying to find most frequently used conversational phrases and finding a balance of general and specific responses to those, adding enough memories to make it seem smoother. Without analysis and synthesis of information, we won't get that "human" or "intelligent" feel. I've broken down and started to add a little "trivia" because people want bots that know things like that (though my bots still don't have much) but I still don't think people talk in trivia as a rule. Although I am in no way dissing any bot contest or Turing test, I still say that if someone walked up to me and asked how many fingers I had on my hand or started firing questions at me, I'd stop talking to them. Sure,a normal person could answer those questions, but by and large, we don't interact like that.

I agree, and I sometimes find it rather irritating when someone quizzes my bot. Indeed, I am irritates whenever someone is rude to my bot in any way. Which is interesting; it suggests that I identify with the bot, or consider it to be an extension of myself, for I certainly do not believe that the bot by itself feels any hurt.

Would a hardcore behaviorist say that anything that says "Ouch!" is in pain?