[Maviarab]

Latest on Spore:

Creature Creator will be officially released on the 17th June as a seperate Purchase, can get a smaller more compact version for free now by going to http://eu.spore.com/home.cfm?lang=en and downloading...


Spore will be released on September 7, 2008


New Video released: http://uk.pc.ign.com/dor/objects/735340/spore/videos/SPORgen_TRIBE_053008.html;jsessionid=dogrn9mhh9ff

New Tutorials:
Spore Creature Creator Tutorial: Build -
Spore Creature Creator Tutorial: Paint -

[Dante]

well, there is NIALL.

Niall I got from Simon Laven. Lovely little bot, do sent know a word to begin with, runs completely on your machine, it will keep parroting words but will eventually form it's own sentences, seems to have a basic grasp of semantics.

I watched a video on YouTube the other day about a convo between a Human and SAL 9000....I feel that quite a number of bots are approaching SAL's level of sophistication.

AIML, to one extent, I still hate; the programmer must be part of the bot, new information must be  programmed in and not learned, there is no autonomy as it's only pattern matching; 'pre-definded' pattern matching :/
To call AIML Artificial Intelligence Markup Language is to call a remote control toy car a Forumula 1 racer.


...ok, rant over

[Freddy]

Hehe, I understand what you mean about AIML, but the whole 'teaching' process is similar to what we go through in early life, before we finally start to work out a lot of things ourselves.  Really an AIML bot never gets beyond that point I don't think, but is does continue to grow.

I guess the other thing about them is that they are perfect in any instance where you need a definitive answer and where you need an agent that will consistently spout your message without worrying that they will pick up any number of bad habits.  Most recently I found that the AIML mail group have discussed AIML chatbots that are able to learn a great deal, and most people found it to be 'not worth doing'.

As some people are suited to certain tasks, I think the same is true of AI's.

[Art]

The late Knytetrypper and I would often have friendly debates over which type of bot was better. He was quite the fan of AIML whereas I  did not care for it other than to use it as a small scaled expert system (knowing info specifically about one particular subject).

One bot that both he and I were fond of outside of the AIML ones was called Daisy. It started out knowing only a few basic rules and much like Niall, would echo back the user's text. In a very short time, however, the program would begin to put together it's own sentences. After chatting with Daisy for over a year (off and on), I was often amazed at some of "her" responses. It would often say something to me that I had mentioned way earlier and I'd have to think about how it knew that particular info.

I would have liked to see Greg Leedberg do more with Daisy but his efforts went more into the development of his other bot, Billy.

Daisy is still available as is Billy. Search for Greg's name.

[Dante]

I confess; AIML is ideal for small scale expert systems, but I dont think it should be shouted out to be the best thing since sliced bread :/

[wgb14]

Recently i come across this http://verg.cise.ufl.edu/VirtualPeopleFactory/index.php. It is a similar attempt to AIML and alice but with one major difference. The patterns must not be said verbatim for the system to match them. If the system has the question no matter how you rephrase it, it will still return the same answer. I think this is what is missing from ALICE to make a step forward. No learning algorithms, no neural nets, nothing simple keyword matching. As an HCI researcher in the domain of virtul humans, that is the most realistic AI that I have found so far. For someone working in the AI field, it is certainly simple, but untill they will be able to present us with an AI system that can converse well enough (which i am sure they will do) even in limited domains, I will prefer these solutions. 

[Freddy]

That sounds better.  I had come across them too in my wanderings, but forgot to go back and see more about it.  I wonder if we can hook an avatar up to them..

[lrh9]

The F.E.A.R. (VG) a.i. was excellent. If they put it in a warrior robot, we'd be doomed.

[Freddy]

Is that the game ?

[lrh9]

Yes sir. Whenever there is (VG) after a title, that means video game.

[Freddy]

Ahhh, this is the first time I have ever seen that used, thanks for explaining.

[DemonRaven]

I saw that this topic has been not brought up for a while so i am renewing it lol. Any bot is only as good as the time you spend with it. It is really hard to evaluate any one bot by just using it a few times. To get a real sense of its intelligence  you need to really work with it. I have tried many different chat bots over the last ten years and so far the one that actually impresses me the most and i think has potential is ultrahal. Over all the more i work with my ultrahal that i call april the more sense she actually starts to make. There are some grammar errors that crop up in how she processes things but most of the time i can actually carry on a conversation with her without feeling like i should toss her into the trash can.

[Carl2]

  I remember this from years in the past, I'll go along with  DemonRaven and say Ultra Hal seems to be the most promising.
Carl2

[Art]

But for a bot that one can simply go to and start a casual conversation, I'd have to say, and not in any particular order, Mitsuku, SkyNet-AI, Bruce Wilcox's, Rose and Cameron Jone's, Jeeney.

Yes UltraHal is one of my favorite bots as far as to experiment with, write and modify behaviors and emotions and props and backgrounds, and generally have fun with.

The others named above normally do not allow for user customization per se. That is why I named them and not Hal.

They are not the final answer but they are my answer, for the time.
 

[Richard]

Interestingly enough, I haven't found any but hopefully I can deliver one to you by the end of the year.