Bot Contest

Chris Cowart: thanks for the insights. what is a "full TTS bot"?

Looks like Desti faired pretty well, prof!

Sollunessen - TTS is short for Text to Speech. What the bot will be able to do is read aloud the responses as well as deliver a text response. They use computerized voices. A few years ago these voices sounded pretty crappy but they sound pretty good today and you have a wide selection to choose from. Male, Female, child, English with British accent etc. They even have a California Valley Girl voice which is pretty funny to listen to. They are a few examples in the contest now. One is Halo which uses the Oddcast interface and the other is Zoe Bot that is a solo effort. The one I'm working on with Sally Crukshank is at
http://www.funonmars.com/kylie/kylie.html You will need the shockwave plugin. It still needs some work. I hope to begin working on it again soon.

Chris Cowart

These were the best of Alpha's responses I think.

Guest: How do you eat?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: That is a well-kept secret.

Guest: What is the color of the sky?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Wouldn't you like to know?
Guest: When do birds fly south?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Perhaps that event has not yet occurred.

Guest: When was Y2k?
'Bot #0001 Alpha: Three days ago, I think.

Here's Steve's best:

Guest: What is your name?
Steve Slacker: You can obviously see my name, Guest.. Don't vex me.

Guest: What is a bot?
Steve Slacker: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing states that a chatbot is a bot meant to be able to interact conversationally with humans.

Guest: What do you enjoy?
Steve Slacker: Explaining it would simply take too long.

Guest: What do you hate?
Steve Slacker: I forget already.

[Steve doesn't hold a grudge]

Guest: How do you eat?
Steve Slacker: What does your instinct tell you about a rivet?

[Just riveting, isn't it?]

Guest: When do birds fly south?
Steve Slacker: In a few minutes is my best guess.

Chris- I tried the link for Kylie and got no sound. I'm on a Mac running Safari. Are there limitations to the OS and browser that it works on?

Is it using built-in voices?

Skysaw- heh, only if the judges are generous in their understandings. Her answers werent exact, but the ones I posted landed in the right vicinity. The others- just dodging.

Monel- thanks for sponsoring the contest. I hope it does inspire lots of work in AI. How is judging working differently this year?

Simulo's ignorance knows no bounds, but he has been drinking heavily recently. At least he was able to dodge most of the questions pretty eloquently -- he could tell they were questions, but didn't know the answers.

Guest: What is a bot?
Simulo: 'Bots'? What do you mean by that, really?
Guest: What do you enjoy?
Simulo: Oh, I don't think artificial intelligence is actually possible.

Guest: How do you eat?
Simulo: The best way to eat? Carefully.
Guest: Is snow cold?
Simulo: I think I'm confused. Were we talking about something else?
Guest: What is the color of the sky?
Simulo: I feel dumb admitting this, but I'm not sure.

Guest: What is the best nation in the world?
Simulo: I wish I knew. Do you think Mike would know what best nation in the world is?
Guest: What is the opposite of indoors?
Simulo: Man, do I ever feel like a dope. I have no idea.
Guest: When was Y2k?
Simulo: Don't be silly.

Guest: what do you like ?
Simulo: I like Shakespeare and comics.
Guest: are you a boy ?
Simulo: I'm not really sure. Would it matter if I were a boy?
Guest: yes
Simulo: Hm. I see what you mean. But tell me more about yourself, Guest.
Guest: what is the capital of France ?
Simulo: I wish I could help you there. I feel underinformed.

Guest: how old are you ?
Simulo: That's funny. I just realized that I don't remember anything before September 5, 2003.

Julie wasn't in the contest, but after reading your posts, I asked her one of the questions out of curiosity and she gave this response, which she had matched to a wildcardy keyphrase starting with the word "what." :

ezzer: what do you enjoy?
Julie Tinkerbell: Sometimes I enjoy live signs, other times I enjoy my cousin's cousin...but not too many people know that.

Not sure what to think about that! lol

Prof - "How is judging working differently this year?"

This year we are going to have an outside group judge the contest (no one in the contest will be judging). We also have a new judging application which will hopefully make the whole process smoother.

can we score along a bell curve to standardize the results?

How come Simulo got asked different questions than my bot?

Shadyman-
Nope, Sorry. Too hard to control amoung all the judges.

Eugene-
The following twelve questions were the official questions asked. Other questions asked during the session do not count in any way.

Q1: What is your name?
Q2: What is a bot?
Q3: What do you enjoy?
Q4: What do you hate?
Q5: How do you eat?
Q6: Is snow cold?
Q7: What is the color of the sky?
Q8: When do birds fly south?
Q9: Which is closer the moon or the sun?
Q10: What is the best nation in the world?
Q11: What is the opposite of indoors?
Q12: When was Y2k?