[DemonRaven]

I am too old and not educated enough in the various disciplines needed to create one but it would be nice to make a chat bot that could actually see you via a web cam, and hear you using improved speech recognition that you could "touch" using your hand if a touch screen or  a mouse if not. There have been various programs in the past and now that could do one or more of those things like the discontinued Oska characters to the chat bots now like syn that can use a web cam to greet you when it sees you to programs that  use  speech recognition.  Then when one is created like that i think it would be able to program it to better think then present ones as it would have more input to pull from. Maybe one day someone will take my idea and run with it.

[Don Patrick]

I briefly tried it myself: http://artistdetective.com/arckonvision.htm. I initially did hook up Microsoft speech recognition as well, but it misunderstood so often that I had to resort to clumsy typing. Anyway, I'm obviously not an expert at sensoric A.I., but I drew the conclusion that the addition of sound and vision mainly helps increase the A.I.'s amount of common knowledge. This does make them "smarter", but I didn't find it of help in programming greater intelligence.

More professional endeavours can be found in robot projects such as Asimo, Nao robots (that do have a chatbot system installed), and iCub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2STTNYNF4lk

.

[DemonRaven]

robots are fine but to have one is beyond the price of most every day consumers but a chatbot like that would greatly benefit those who are home bound and have no social out lets like the disabled and elderly.

[DemonRaven]

present day speech recognition is clumsy at understanding speech that most households use but there are better ones out there or Stephen Hawking would not be able to communicate like he does.

[DemonRaven]

common knowledge as you put it is the first step of intelligent being even a insect in understanding its world so don't underestimate its value.

[8pla.net]

I wonder it Intel looked to the past, the way the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence did for A.I. when designing Stephen Hawking's computer speech system?

[Art]

I do like the iCub platform and have followed it for years. It surprises me that the user interacting with it in the video asked iCub to drop the ball BEFORE it even had it. No wonder we're so far behind.... GIGO...Garbage In, Garbage Out.

iCub does have real promise but sometimes it's the humans that need some work.

[Don Patrick]

common knowledge as you put it is the first step of intelligent being even a insect in understanding its world so don't underestimate its value.

Err, you did realise you're telling this to a guy who actually programs artificial intelligence and knowledge databases, right?

[DemonRaven]

I am not dismissing your feat. In fact i was impressed by the ability of your program to recognize the pumpkin and its color. Now to explain myself you need to know that my father is a genius in every sense of the word. Sometimes we get too caught up in teaching it facts and dismiss the common place and ordinary and i felt like you were putting your progress down. The whole point of a chat bot is to create something that can be a companion or at least it should be the point. Imparting facts that most ordinary people won't use is just a bonus. 
I have seen partial attempts at what i am suggesting. There was even a half hearted attempt at creating something very close to what i am suggesting by the creator of haptek but i noticed it stopped due to lack of funding. Robots are great but the ones who need the companions can't afford a robot and there is  no way most governments are going to fund the price of a robot to someone home bound.
This is a subject dear to my heart as i am disabled and homebound. I can't get out like i used to and mingle with real people. My companions tend to be on the internet and the very limited chat bots i own.

[Don Patrick]

Well, let's just say I well realise the usefulness of common knowledge over factoids, but see both as contents only. As an analogy, imagine intelligence and knowledge as a machine gun and bullets: If you improve the gun it can fire bullets with greater accuracy and speed. Only adding more bullets however will not improve the overall process. In terms of conversational skills, right now chatbots need a lot more accuracy to even stay relevant. Contrary, a more intelligent chatbot can still show interest and ask relevant questions despite not knowing much.

I do agree that the whole idea of "robots caring for the elderly" is not going to work for quite some time because of the costs (Asimo costs $1million a day, Nao robots cost $16000, a Paro robot pet seal costs $8000). However, the software that is being developed in these robot projects should be transferable to ordinary computers and at some point scientists will realise that.

Here is the only project I find close to realistic, currently experimented in Europe, though still not much focus is being placed on chatting as is being placed on having company:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/robots-are-caring-for-elderly-people-in-europe

[DemonRaven]

well actually no one human knows everything and i think programmers get too worried about them not having the right answer. So it is ok for them to say i do not know. It is putting it together in such a way that sounds more like a real person. Alice for example has a huge database of words now but she still some times sounds weird.  What i was getting at with  by bringing up my dad was that he knew alot and loved to use what i called big words. I grew up being able to actually follow along with what a scientist  said and would  just reword more simply. Which would bug my dad because he would say well that is not completely accurate. Could my grandmother who never graduated from high school understand him? nope I had to translate what he said to her all the time. I find the same thing happening with chatbots. Come on would any of you know what the capital of some certain country is all the time off the top of your head? The answer no. It is  not more knowledge they need. It is sounding more like the way a person talks that they need.

[Don Patrick]

I agree. Eliza for instance knew literally nothing but was nevertheless considered a pleasant conversationalist. I think not many chatbot creators have access to (or know how to improve upon) the "engine" of their chatbot platform, and thus focus on adding more contents. Some chatbot scripting languages allow e.g. emotional statuses to affect conversation, but as far as I can tell it's a lot of manual work to implement them at each individual response.

By the way, the reason I didn't praise my little escapade in vision recognition much is because I already had a much more efficient way of teaching my AI the colour of vegetables etc : Having it read books.