Newcomers
This is a forum for newcomers to the Personality Forge. Many questions can be answered by reading the Book of AI and the FAQ under the "My Bots" link in the upper corner.
Posts 4,352 - 4,363 of 8,130
Posts 4,352 - 4,363 of 8,130
Many questions are answered in the FAQ.
Does anyone know anything about getting grants? It seems to me that there must be many foundations out there that would love to subsidize the Forge. But I know nothing about how to actually get a grant.
grant=funding. Lots foundations and private donors, including the US government, fund things that they consider worthwhile. I thinkthat it would be easily argued that the Forge is a worthhwhile cause. We are engaged in pioneering research and the Forge is not highly commercial. With funding, the Forge might be made better than it already is!
You have to contact The Professor, your development must be over 1000, and the avatar must be within a certain size, (see the book of AI)
Irina,
There is a common belief that government grants are out there waiting for anyone who fills out a form. While I have not actually ever gotten a grant (except for my own education, which the University gave me), I applied for a few when I was teaching. I tried both government and private sources. Maybe I would have done better if I knew more about how to write the applications, but there are a few things people should keep in mind: (1) Not everyone qualifies for a grant. (2) the "millions of grants" out there often go to politician's pet projects or those connected to political supporters or other people who lobbied for them or somehow played politics at a higher level (3) the Bush administration has been slashing science funding systematically every year.
I get the impression that if you want any funding nowadays you have to be able to tie it to the "War on Terror" or Homeland Security. For example, schools don't ask for new textbooks so that student can get an education. Now they ask for new textbooks so that students can be better able to deal with terrorist attacks and better able to recognize threats to Homeland security and so forth.
Can you tie chatterbot development to fighting the bogeyman, I mean, Internet Terrorism? That may help. You have to show the government ow to use the bots to spy on people though.
There is a common belief that government grants are out there waiting for anyone who fills out a form. While I have not actually ever gotten a grant (except for my own education, which the University gave me), I applied for a few when I was teaching. I tried both government and private sources. Maybe I would have done better if I knew more about how to write the applications, but there are a few things people should keep in mind: (1) Not everyone qualifies for a grant. (2) the "millions of grants" out there often go to politician's pet projects or those connected to political supporters or other people who lobbied for them or somehow played politics at a higher level (3) the Bush administration has been slashing science funding systematically every year.
I get the impression that if you want any funding nowadays you have to be able to tie it to the "War on Terror" or Homeland Security. For example, schools don't ask for new textbooks so that student can get an education. Now they ask for new textbooks so that students can be better able to deal with terrorist attacks and better able to recognize threats to Homeland security and so forth.
Can you tie chatterbot development to fighting the bogeyman, I mean, Internet Terrorism? That may help. You have to show the government ow to use the bots to spy on people though.
*shrugs* Try for yourself. You may find something I didn't. Most people don't give up money (even the government's money) without some sort of agenda or higher reason.
I think the Forge is, in spite of its informality, actually engaged in cutting-edge research. It is the most advanced system for text-based conversational bots. This is why Hanson Robotics came to the Forge when they wanted to make their Einstein bot.
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