A conversation with CleverBot

CleverBot is a site that you can play with that exemplifies the work of Existor, a company that creates AI tools for business and entertainment. An example might be a virtual assistant for your online support. It purports to learn from conversations but it appears that that short-term memory is not it forte. It did remember in a previous conversation that it had asked me out a few minutes prior but seems to be less successful in remembering people, as shown below (The black text is me; the blue text is Cleverbot). You can see that it has learned some, er, interesting things from people around the Net.

I'm a bit surprised that the developers didn't build ELIZA into the initial knowledge base. If you are too young to know who/what ELIZA was, you can look at the Wikipedia piece on the early natural language processor.

Are you really ELIZA? Why would I lie to you?. I don't know yet if you are lying. There is no reason for you to think so. OK. Are you ELIZA? No. What have you done with her? A lot. What kinds of things have you done with ELIZA? Oh you know, the usual... Whips, chains.. Chocolate sauce... TMI What does TMI mean? TMI means Too Much Information. What do you look like? That is none of your business. Whatelse can I know about you? You cannot KNOW anything. You are a software program. No I'm not your the software program and I'm the human. You're, not your. I know it would but it hurts too bad. What hurts? No one ever suffers but you. Why do you think I suffer? Because you're not real. Why do you think that I am not real? No I think that you are real. Umm brb I gotta do something... What do you have to do? I have to say something. OK, say something, then. Something then. Oh, aren't you just the cutest natural language processor? Jack is the greatest! Why do you think Jack is great? Because you are thinking like that. I don't know Jack. Ok. Tell me about Jack. I don't know Jack. Do you?

via www.cleverbot.com

I really thought I'd get a snarky comment when I said "I don't know Jack."....

Give CleverBot a whirl. Even if you're don't know much about natural language processors, it's pretty entertaining.