I remember back in the late eighties there used to be a software (whose name included the letters L, I, S and A that I now largely have forgotten) that can chat with a human. A question posed by the human called for a standard answer. A typical conversation would be as follows:

Human (H): What is your name?
Software (S): Why do you ask?
.
.
.
(I tell you I have forgotten everything except for the question part.)
H: What is the meaning of life?
S: Why do you ask?
H: Why am I talking to you?
S: Why do you ask?
H: Go to hell.
S: Ok.

Of course, I made up some of the parts. (EDIT: It was ELIZA.)

Now what if (standard question for spec fic writers) two chatbots actually talk to each other?

[Why do you ask?]
[...@%^*]

Looking at the transcripts of Alice (short for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and Jabberwacky, the conversations ranged from surreal to hilarious:

Alice (A): Do you dream?
Jabberwacky (J): Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

They're as good as office chats, imho.

via kottke.

This entry was posted by sky, on Thursday, May 17, 2007. You can leave your response.