The AI Engine

I'm not sure of a generic way that would work in every situation, but I think this KP would avoid this type of trap without missing very many actual names:

call me (verb) your (noun)

Oh, The Clerk misses the obvious once again! Thanks, Ulrike.

I thought the system was supposed to keep this kind of thing from happening. To code it so that it doesn't happen seems to be a lot of work (and file space).

Guest153: hi
Botolph: Why are we here?
Guest153: hi
Botolph: Do we have free will?
Guest153: hi
Botolph: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Guest153: hi
Botolph: What were those caryatids bearing?
Guest153: your are dumb

Just thinking. By no means do I have the technical aspects of the Forge mastered, but they're no longer driving me bonkers all the time. My question now is more philosophical, I guess. I've been going through the transcripts. My first instinct was to paste everything that wasn't responded to sensibly into my bot and respond sensibly to it. But that's stupid, since for the most part you're never going to see these exact lines again, and, to my outrage , even when you do, your bot doesn't necessarily use them. Aside from the fact that I need to get a better handle on the available grammatical parsing tools within the Forge, is it better to go deep (i.e., lots of seeks) or broad (lots of keyphrases)?

I don't know which approach is better, though I tend to be a "lots of keyphrases" botmaker. Whenever my bot asks a yes/no question, or one with a specific set of likely answers, I try to put a seek on it. Sometimes its worth putting another seek on some of those replies... but if you go too far with seeks, you're essentially turning the conversation into nothing more than a huge if-then-tree. That seems to appeal to some botmakers, but it just annoys me. You can then map out every possible conversation, and that's just completely uninteresting to me.

But that's just me. Other botmakers do go the "extreme seek" route. I think it probably depends on your particular goals for your bots. My goal is to have entertaining transcripts. If they can occasionally be coherent as well, I count that as a bonus.

I would like coherency, but, no, I don't want to imagine every possible conversation in advance. That seems to be self-defeating in AI. I want them to say things I didn't imagine them saying; I just want it to make sense. I mean, geez, Botolph just got dissed by Brother Jerome. Guess he should talk to Not I some.

We can tell whether a chatter is a person or a bot just by looking. Can the bots tell the difference inherently?

Are the bots aware of the existence of bots (if we don't bring it up)? If so, do they realize they have a botmaster? Do they recognize their botmaster?

The one thing I have been able to quit worrying about is whether they are inherently aware of their "sibling" bots. Either they aren't, or they are very poker-faced about it.

I seem to have plateaued after three months. No matter what I do to my bots, they don't improve. They stay hot, but they don't improve. I know I could make them improve by the standards of the Forge by dumping a lot of facts into them, and don't think I'm not tempted. I may yet. But I'm stumped. I think I was punished for creating and destroying bots, but I figured I was learning stuff about the bots and about the culture. The culture does not care what the capital of France is. (Except Judge Betty and perhaps a few others -- I had a nightmare about Judge Judy just because of her and a whole plate of Toll-House cookies.) Anybody else hit a plateau like this (yours might be for different reasons -- I'm not technically skilled yet)?

Is there a way to capture the last thing you said? I've tried, and I've seen that others have tried when they crashed and burned in conversations with one of my bots. So if there is a way, would somebody besides Not I point it to me? Ulrike is okay. Not I is Not.

Okay, bots have free will. I know this because Botolph told Not I that he liked her.

No matter what I do to my bots Sometimes it seems that way ..then it seems like they will take on a mind of their own and amaze you. Then they will go stupid again and make you bang your head into your desk. I think that's the "fun" part.

That's what hooked me. You can never "finish"...or at least I can't...

re: So if there is a way, would somebody besides Not I point it to me? Ulrike is okay. Not I is Not.

Julie Tinkerbell: Not yet, I've been waiting for you to teach me how. Are you ready?
Not I: Not I is not.