[HopeGames]

Howdy AI Guys and Gals.

I'm totally new to AI. My background is military special operations and since leaving the army I've transformed from close protection work to telcom and on to software development.  I made the switch cuz I've noticed that not near as many people want to shoot at IT guys... except maybe their employees   

I'm now heading up an NGO to get Out of School Youth a high school diploma through a prototype online education platform that we have put together over the last few years.  We are due to start teacher training soon and from what I know about AI it is highly likely that we can use it to take some of the work load off of our online teachers.

Anyway,  I believe in surrounding myself with people who are smarter than I am, and I thought this might be a good place to get introduced to some AI guru's.  If anyone is down to help these kids put their lives back together with the help of AI then I would like to chat with you.

Cheers...
HopeGames

[Ultron]

Welcome to the forum Hope!
I am sure you will never find anyone smarter then you, but I am convinced you will meet people who can inspire and guide you through your journey!

[Freddy]

Hi HopeGames, welcome to AiDreams

AI might be a little safer than what you are used to I hope

[Art]

Thank you for your service and welcome!
Though probably not the definitive group with regard to AI, but were are a friendly group of people (for the most part) dedicated to learning, sharing and exploring the wonderfully challenging and entertaining field of Artificial Intelligence.

Our archives hold a lot of great food for hungry minds and some humor for those minds in need of a little R&R. So kick your shoes off and relax as you wander through these collected dreams!

Please see the TOS at the bottom and feel free to post any questions of problems. Thanks!

[DemonRaven]

There are a lot of free tutorials about AI out there. Some are even on utube. I would send you to a website with lots of links on them but lol it might seem like spam. Good luck in your endeavors.

[Freddy]

Feel free to share your links Demon. We just frown on spam and advertising unrelated junk.

[DemonRaven]

You may have created a monster now lol. Woohoo here come the links on everything lol. ]

This section on my website has many various links that can help you and most are free. http://chatbotfriends.altervista.org/reference.html

[Freddy]

Haha    I don't think you will be a monster. One of the main reasons we are here is to share things.

[8pla.net]

DemonRaven, "Woohoo here come the links on everything lol."

Yay, joining the party!  New beta version: here !

Easy to use light weight approach...
With features like learning in real time, which you might expect from an advanced approach.

[HopeGames]

Good Evening 8pla.net, Freddy, DemonRaven, Art, Ultron7,

Thanks a lot for the warm welcome and the links to the AI reference materials 

We have just implemented the Pandorabots API into our Learning Management System for the purpose of helping the students with their lessons, and we also plan to use students to program AIML as part of a livelihood program for the students that pass our course of instruction.  Perhaps you fellas can direct me the proper subject area(s) of your forum where I could do the following:
1. Find an AIML programming/training guru who could consult with us as our AI subject matter expert.
2. Find a AIML Chatbot developer who can consult with us on the design, development and testing of our chatbot as well as integrating of AIML into our adaptive learning module of our Learning Management System.
3. An overall AI generalist who can consult with us to help us wade through the vast amount of AI information and zero in on the info that we need to support our student programs.

I'm also new to the whole social/forum thing, so I hope I'm not violating any protocol by asking these questions.  I believe strongly that AI can make a substantial contribution to improving the lives of our disadvantaged students  and help them carve a path out of the slums. The university that we've partnered with has the capability of raising a fair amounts of funds to support our AI component program and consultants, but I need to first demonstrate to the university the vast potential of AI to get the ball rolling with them.

Cheers... HopeGames

[8pla.net]

Being an educator is something you may have in common with at least several members in the A.I. community.  Teachers visiting the A.I. community may, without realizing it, be seeking advice from other teachers.  And quite a few of us have appeared on TV and on the TV news, and in the press, talking about A.I.

AIML is one of the most popular options in A.I. However, when it comes to education  you MUST have control over the AIML responses given to students. You CAN NOT be in a position to have to explain an age inappropriate response to parents or guardians. This is a simple fact in education, which certainly does not disparage AIML in any way.

CAUTION: Some of the free AIML set may not be age appropriate for students. An AIML interpreter may repeat a curse word entered by the student in the classroom. In general, checking tens of thousands of XML records may be tedious, very time consuming, and risky for education.

The solution is a student version AIML interpreter and reduced AIML script that is safe for education, easier to inspect, and has real instructional value. Program 8 was designed specifically for elementary and middle schools. It has a built in word censor to automatically block curse words. Many of the responses are common teacher phrases, such as "RAISE YOUR HAND FIRST" or "TAKE OUT A PIECE OF PAPER"   Dr. Wallace gave a nod to unofficial codename Program 8 when we discussed it by phone.  Thanks for your support.  Program 8 may be found here:  http://www.ElizaBot.com/Program8

[Art]

Good words of advice. Perhaps teaching the kids how to create a chatbot or to learn how to code. Check with various creators to see what programming language worked the best for them or at least which they felt was easiest for young students to grasp.

Chart their progress with goal oriented guidelines and even classroom "groups" working toward that goal of creating a rudimentary chatbot.

The kids will learn viable new skills and the experience should help promote teamwork and friendly competition while having fun at the same time.

You might wish to contact some past chatbot competition winners and pick their brains before deciding on one particular method or language.

Just some thoughts... Good luck!

[DemonRaven]

If this is at a university i would assume that the child appropriate aiml is not a consideration. The best expert on aiml is of course the one who created it richard wallace. There are many versions of programs that use aiml.  Aiml was designed to be easy to learn.  Good luck with class.

[8pla.net]

AiDreams is really like a CMS I would say.  Tyler is the AiDreams robot integrated into the CMS, which does a great job without all the functionality of an advanced chatbot system.  An LMS is like a CMS.  That's why, like Tyler, I think a lightweight A.I. engine is a better fit for LMS integration.  For example, a chatbot integrated into an LMS never needs to remember student names, because it gets them directly from the LMS student profiles.

[HopeGames]

Good Day All,

Thanks to everyone for your input.  Let me explain a bit more about how we intend to implement the AI:
We are running an alternative learning high school equivalency program for low income youth in Tondo, Manila.  Tondo is the most densely populated quasi-city on the planet, and is largely a slum. For those students who graduate the alternative learning program we will give them the opportunity to compete for a slot in our AIML development program.

The graduates will undergo an AIML training program and the top performers will be offered a job within our social enterprise as an AI developer.  We plan to begin with 5 AI developers and then expand to 10 - 25 - 50 etc.  As an "AI developer" the majority of our graduates will primarily be involved in writing the high level AIML Pattern and Template Statements.  The control and data structures along with the syntax would be managed by a handful of low level developers.  The overall framework and environment for our AIML will be setup and managed by an highly experienced AIML developer consultant.

We have partnered up with Pandorabots to provide the backend that serves the AIML, but as soon as practical we will develop and deploy our own AIML servers.  Based on our research the drawback of AIML 2.0 is the limited responses/patterns that are currently available, which really boils down to manpower, and manpower in the developed world can be quite expensive.  For example: the consulting services of Pandorabots bills out at $250 per hour, so of course we cannot afford to involve them in the setup of our AIML development environment much less the writing of patterns!!

Its relatively rare to find a virtual agents, chatbots etc on commercial, NGO or government websites in the developing world and we hope to fill that void beginning in the Philippines, and through our considerable network of contacts we can easily gain access to that market.  The Philippines is now the call center capitol of the world (due to their proficiency with the English language) with hundreds of thousands of persons employed in call centers, and we intend to make it the virtual agent/chatbot center of the third world and hopefully in time the developed world as well.

Although the majority of our alternative learning students live in poverty they are highly motivated to improve both themselves and their community.  Generally speaking the cost of labor in the Philippines is not only highly talented but it is 1/5 (or less) the cost in the labor in the developed world.  Many of the Fortune 500 companies (Apple, Nike, etc) exploit the low cost of labor to fill their already bulging pockets, but as we are a social enterprise the low cost of our labor force will not be exploited, but instead it will provide a competitive edge for the benefit of our laborers, as the majority profits will be revert to our social purpose and our labor force.

In the near future we will be posting in the appropriate AI Dreams Forums seeking more specific advice as well as those persons who wish to be paid consultants.

Cheers....