UPDATE:
I have received a response and am waiting for permission to post.
Stay tuned!
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Art>It has been some great length of time since I last experienced
> Cassandra. I have a lot of questions regarding the program as I'm sure
> you all get more than your share of them from other bot/AI enthusiasts.
>
>When I revisited your site today and watched the videos I have to say I
> was rather impressed at the TTS voice, the dynamic (if I can use that
> word) interaction between the User and Bot and the degree of "Intellect"
> that was portrayed by the bot.
Emmett>> Actually, ejTalk is not about "chatbots". We are focused on the
elements of conversation; how to navigate and negotiate a conversation. We
use specific domain information to talk about. In the case of Hamlet it was
a structured data (xml document) that was a semantic "Cliff's Notes" on the
play: the cast, their basic relationships, key concepts/plot elements,
famous quotes, etc. In the case of the planets it was a list of things
(planets) and some attributes. For the planets she could apply generic
knowledge about lists to display and interact via voice and touch. The
specifics (planets vs. cities or restaurants or 'species of ants' or ...)and
other information that relates to those items in the list are supplied in a
structured xml file. So, she did not read Hamlet or astronomy books and
reason her answers. Chatbots seem intent on trying (and failing) to fool
people into believing they are a human. ejTalk is interested in automating
natural conversational mechanisms that make the conversation with the
machine conform to what people do naturally (ellipsis, indirect
confirmation, familiarity with the task, etc.)
Art>I thought the program quite similar to Mr. Bruce Wilcox's Suzette and to
> Mr. Leslie Spring's Silvia. These two programs also work quite well with
> staying on topic but Cassandra surprised me with the ability to reply to
> the posed inquiries in various ways and even with the inference of the
> word "it" in many instances.
Emmett>>> I have spoken with Leslie at conferences. Deixis and anaphora are
some of the things that we are making automatic. If you point to a planet in
the list and say "how far is that one from the sun?" Cassandra can
automatically combine the context with the conversational focus and responds
on topic. But if some time passed and we talked about some other things,
then she might attempt to verify if you were still "talking about Jupiter?"
Art>I'd like to know the type of program in which it is written? I don't
> think it is an ALICE or Pandora based bot as the responses were too "on
> target". That is to say, providing the questions were not scripted along
> with the answers or vice versa.
Emmett>>> No, Cassandra is not an AIML bot. She uses the ejTalker engine.
Her conversational behaviors are written in STEP files (and others) and much
of the power of the system is that it is that behaviors derive from more
basic behaviors and this derivation can go as deep (and broad) as desired.
Additionally, ejTalker has a number of mechanisms that support interesting
and appropriate variations in her interactions. For instance if you were
adding things to a grocery list Cassandra might use different phrases like
"put on" or "added to" your grocery list. If you were adding a series of
things she would notice that and shorten her responses on subsequent "adds"
just like a human would.
Art>> It would be nice to allow the bot / software to be for sale as a lot of
practical uses could be realized by its use.
Emmett>>> The ejTalker engine is currently being used to develop an
assistive agent product. And we are considering others. We are also working
on a webish version. We are working on the cloud issues now. Some of the big
issues are the speech input. The demos you saw use the speech recognition
that comes with the Windows opsys. It is used to great advantage for the
semantics of what was spoken (not just pattern matches like AIML). And the
TTS is a specific ATT voice that has nice qualities (and some quirky ones
too).
But we are working toward a "cloud" version to interact with ... and
hopefully with a big enough pool of serious/friendly users we can let her
learn and grow. That's the dream.
Art>At any rate, thanks for your time and all the best,
>
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Art>With your permission, I would like to post our email on one of the A.I.
> based forums (in the UK) that I frequent as I believe a lot of our
> members would love to hear a bit more about Cassandra.
> The site is:
www.aidreams.co.uk so please feel free to stop by and say
> hi anytime.
Emmett>Art,
Per your request: Feel free to post the note.
Best,
Emmett
