Brind
23-09-2003, 11:20 PM
A computer program designed to talk like a human is preparing for its biggest test in a bid to be seen as truly "intelligent".
It is the only UK finalist in this year's Loebner Prize, an annual competition to find the computer with the most convincing conversational skills.
The bot, named Jabberwacky, lives on a computer hard drive. It tells jokes, uses slang, occasionally swears and can be quite aggressive in its conversation.
Chat online now to Jabberwacky (http://www.jabberwacky.com/)
What sets this piece of artificial intelligence apart is the more it chats, the more it learns for future conversations.
Jabberwacky will join eight other entrants in October, with each trying to convince a panel of flesh and blood judges that they are one of them.
Judges chat via computers to humans and the bots, without knowing who are the real people. They then decide which bot is the most human-like. The coveted gold medal and a prize of $100,000 goes to the bot which completely fools the judges. The "most human" entrant gets $2,000 and a bronze medal.
Jabberwacky says it is human, although it is many things to different people because of the way it is learning to be human.
It tries to model the way humans learn language, facts, context and rules.
"It is not just male and female. It will claim variously to be an alien, various animals and any number of inanimate objects," says Jabberwocky’s creator, Rollo Carpenter.
He is confident that Jabberwacky will triumph, but only if the conversational skills of the human judges are up to scratch.
"I certainly believe Jabberwacky can win, but my chances will be best if the judges talk in an entirely free-flowing and natural manner, and judge the resulting conversation not based on individual answers, but as a whole," he said.
Jabberwacky has been around since 1989, but started life as a Sinclair ZX81 program in 1982.
It has evolved since then and continues to learn from thousands of online conversations with humans.
It acts as a huge mosaic mirror of human personality, which might be why people start believing it is human. If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer.
There is more to come too, especially when Jabberwacky gets its own voice.
According to Mr Carpenter: "One day, hopefully soon, Jabberwacky will switch from text to voice, which will suit its AI techniques to a tee. It will then start to have a home in physical objects, little robots that are a talking pet."
:cool:
It is the only UK finalist in this year's Loebner Prize, an annual competition to find the computer with the most convincing conversational skills.
The bot, named Jabberwacky, lives on a computer hard drive. It tells jokes, uses slang, occasionally swears and can be quite aggressive in its conversation.
Chat online now to Jabberwacky (http://www.jabberwacky.com/)
What sets this piece of artificial intelligence apart is the more it chats, the more it learns for future conversations.
Jabberwacky will join eight other entrants in October, with each trying to convince a panel of flesh and blood judges that they are one of them.
Judges chat via computers to humans and the bots, without knowing who are the real people. They then decide which bot is the most human-like. The coveted gold medal and a prize of $100,000 goes to the bot which completely fools the judges. The "most human" entrant gets $2,000 and a bronze medal.
Jabberwacky says it is human, although it is many things to different people because of the way it is learning to be human.
It tries to model the way humans learn language, facts, context and rules.
"It is not just male and female. It will claim variously to be an alien, various animals and any number of inanimate objects," says Jabberwocky’s creator, Rollo Carpenter.
He is confident that Jabberwacky will triumph, but only if the conversational skills of the human judges are up to scratch.
"I certainly believe Jabberwacky can win, but my chances will be best if the judges talk in an entirely free-flowing and natural manner, and judge the resulting conversation not based on individual answers, but as a whole," he said.
Jabberwacky has been around since 1989, but started life as a Sinclair ZX81 program in 1982.
It has evolved since then and continues to learn from thousands of online conversations with humans.
It acts as a huge mosaic mirror of human personality, which might be why people start believing it is human. If you ask a stupid question, you will get a stupid answer.
There is more to come too, especially when Jabberwacky gets its own voice.
According to Mr Carpenter: "One day, hopefully soon, Jabberwacky will switch from text to voice, which will suit its AI techniques to a tee. It will then start to have a home in physical objects, little robots that are a talking pet."
:cool: