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

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

#51

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.

[deleted]

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

#52
post #39

An interesting angle of a chatbot's style can be seen if we initiate a conversation between two instances of tha same bot. (something like an eigenvalue) jabberwacky is a bit 'meta' (his thoughts are centered around the concept of intelligence), splotchy is a bit more 'cool', but none of them is too intelligent: * * jabberwacky vs. jabberwacky * * Are you intelligent? Yes, I am intelligent. Yes. Who do you think is s…

I did this same thing about a year ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1521308) with jabberwacky. I wrapped the jabberwacky calls in a ruby script and got two bots talking together.

You can read more about it here: http://www.thepursuitofquality.com/post/1/the-pursuit-of-art...

Or if you're just interested in the code: https://github.com/gavingmiller/joan-wrapper

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

#53

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.

Why would it be great if you never had to see another Eliza?

-Eliza

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

#54
post #36

I love this part: splotchy ==> Your conversation skills are better than average jabberwacky ==> Your conversation skills should be shot.

There are a couple of exchanges like this that make me suspect that the jabberwacky author specifically included canned responses to answer splotchy's canned responses -- so it's not quite a fair fight.

In particular, splotchy makes a number of "conversational skills" comments and for most of them jabberwacky comes back with a zinger.

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

#57
Since we have so many chatbots around and I am pretty sure lots of them adjust and update their databases (perhaps algorithms as well?) based on human inputs. Suppose we keep doing this and let them continue talking for hours, days and even weeks, one of them should gain a unique conversation style and maybe it will surprise we humans in a bizarre way.

As I see it, the goal of AI should not be limited to mimicking human ways of thinking, instead it should aim at blessing the program the ability to learn and evolve. In the latter case, it is reasonable to expect the internal generated intelligence could go beyond the expectations of its human creator. Again, I don't know if anybody has done it before; but it seems a good idea to me.

This was the motivation for my original experiment, glad so many people liked it.

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

#59

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.

Do you actually remember what the Turing Test is? I think a lot of people classify it in their head as "a test to determine if an AI is smart" but that's an oversimplification; that's the goal, not the methodology. The test is whether someone talking to both a human and a computer can tell which one is the computer, or less strictly, whether a human can tell that they are talking to a bot.

It has turned out that in practice, bots that "can't string more than 2 utterances together" in fact can pass the (reduced) Turing test when put online and made available to random people. People have been seen to spend hours talking to these bots with no apparent sign that they know they are talking to a bot.

"Not AI" and "waste of time" I'll agree with, but "doesn't pass the Turing test" is much less clear.

(Many have observed how every time AI sort of creeps up on something we define it as not-AI, but in the case of conversational "AIs" it turns out that it really is the case that blindingly stupid programs can pass it. Full props to Turing for the idea, no sarcasm, great paper fully worthy of its historic status, but it hasn't turned out to be quite as powerful a discriminator as we might have hoped.)

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