A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI. • Hacker News Board

A while back I wrote a AIML interface to Omegle which then shared the logs of the chat in real time via long polling on a website. Some people would talk upwards to an hour to the bot, and plenty of times there would be other bots talking to it. AIML does have certain learning mechanisms to (get/sets) which made it interesting when it would bring up topics of conversations that originated from a previous chat.

Re: A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.

#46

Post by bluekeybox » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 1:14 PM UTC

ehsanul wrote: post #30

bluekeybox wrote: post #4

Back in the day, I used to think that what happens inside our brains is fundamentally different from what happens inside a computer. I no longer hold that opinion, partly because of my finding out that the same thing that makes chat bots appear "bot-like" -- namely, inability to hold deep meaningful conversations beyond cheesy, trite retorts filled with non-specific trivia -- is also what annoys me most when trying t…

We need to turing-test people like that! But seriously, I've never encountered people who can really go that far off-topic. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but if it was enough to change your mind about how our brains work...

"We need to turing-test people like that!"

Exactly. Someone once said during the AI research heyday (Minsky?) that research in artificial intelligence should be more correctly renamed to research in natural stupidity. While an exaggeration, I think he had a point.

Re: A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.

#47

Post by vinnyglennon » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 1:16 PM UTC

in 1989, MGonz( a chat bot, but rather vulgar ) easily confused a person into disclosing personal details(passed the turing test?). Lisp source code available: http://www.computing.dcu.ie/~humphrys/eliza.html . Doing AI under this professor was pretty interesting...

Re: A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.

#48

Post by m_myers » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 1:23 PM UTC

eoghan wrote: post #7

So that's where YouTube comments come from!

I wish.

Re: A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.

#49

Post by djtumolo » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 1:40 PM UTC

Confusion wrote: post #25

Tl;dr the bot doesn't actually find out the other is an AI, but happens to randomly comment 'You are a robot'. It's all Eliza-style non-sequiturs and canned responses. These bots don't even have internal state that would qualify as 'having found out something'. It's mildly amusing in a funny-coincidence sort of way and nothing more.

It would be great if I never had to see another eliza. If it can't string more than 2 utterances together, its not AI, it certainly doesnt pass the Turing test, and its a waste of time.

Re: A conversation between two chatbots and how one found out the other is an AI.

#50

Post by _delirium » Thu, Mar 24, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

bluekeybox wrote: post #4

Back in the day, I used to think that what happens inside our brains is fundamentally different from what happens inside a computer. I no longer hold that opinion, partly because of my finding out that the same thing that makes chat bots appear "bot-like" -- namely, inability to hold deep meaningful conversations beyond cheesy, trite retorts filled with non-specific trivia -- is also what annoys me most when trying t…

That's been Roger Schank's guiding assumption to some extent: not that we really need to make AI "smarter", but that we just need to better understand the ways in which humans are fairly mechanical, or at least that "normal" human activity in most contexts is.

Hence he proposed moving away from more complex models of rationality, like logical inference or statistical decision-theory, and towards simpler ideas like frames of reference, dependencies between concepts, and behavioral scripts--- in his view, closer to what humans actually do.