Hi Kevin, I know something about the Loebner prize from following the AI career of Jason Hutchens, whose chatbot won the contest in the late 90's, and who I knew slightly when I was living in Perth (Western Australia) in the mid-90's....
Your approach, on the surface, seems fairly similar to Jason's. I'm guessing you're familiar with his work, but others may not be so I'll post some links here. An old but good paper from his on chatbots and the Loebner contest: http://ciips.ee.uwa.edu.au/Papers/Technical_Reports/1997/05/ His company a-i.com, which essentially shut down about a year ago http://www.a-i.com/ My own approach is quite opposite. While I do aim to make my Novamente AI system (www.realai.net) chat eventually, I've detailed a complex design for integrative cognition, and I think we need a lot of that implemented before we can have the system do chat in a meaningful way [i.e. chat while understanding what it's talking about]. I have a lot of skepticism about any approach to AGI that is primarily or entirely language-focused. I doubt it's going to be possible to get a system to have any significant general intelligence unless it has access, not only to language, but also to a nonlinguistic domain in which some of its linguistic experience can be "grounded" or "anchored" [to use two related terms from the cog sci literature]. I agree that a significant part of human conversation consists of rote memory, and reflexive responses according to habitual communication patterns. To me, however, these are the least interesting parts of human conversation.... And I'm not sure how far mimicking these parts of human conversation gets you, in terms of emulating the other parts of human conversation, which involve deeper thought. One thing is sure though: The database of "conversational units" you're compiling could be *very useful* to a Novamente system [or other AGI system] that was trying to learn to chat [though we're not ready for that quite yet]. It will be a great source of information on conversational pragmatics.... Please, continue maintaining that DB, and maintain it carefully!!! One of these days I'll be wanting to talk to you about an arrangement for sharing it ;) -- Ben Goertzel > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Kevin Copple > Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 4:11 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [agi] Hello from Kevin Copple > > > I just recently joined this e-mail list after following some > links posted by > Tony Lofthouse in the Generation5 forum. I am working on a > natural language > project that can be seen at www.EllaZ.com, and am interested in > what you all > are up to. The e-mails I have received from this list in the > last day or so > have been interesting and informative. Thanks! > > My approach to doing something in the AI field is to start with basic > interface, knowledge, and functional features that can be implemented and > demonstrated. Now that a basic framework is in place, the system can be > expanded and built upon as various techniques are identified as useful and > incorporated. > > It seems to me that rout memorization is an aspect of human > learning, so why > not include a variety of jokes, poems, trivia, images, and so on > as part of > an AI knowledge base? In the EllaZ system we refer to these > chunks of data > as Convuns (conversational units). One plan is for the system to log > interactions with users and identify patterns of interest. The > system would > then be able to predict which Convuns a user would most likely be > interested > in, and also be able to evaluate the interest in a particular Convun. > > Ella was lucky enough to win the 2002 Loebner Prize Contest, which can be > somewhat arbitrary with the limited number of judges and limited length of > conversations. She has a number of functional features that I suspect the > engineering students selected as judges were more likely to test and > appreciate. > > I am currently living Tianjin, China, having sold my > import/export chemicals > business to a competitor. My wife, Zhang Ying, is a local girl > who doesn't > care for the food in the US and doesn't like being away from her > friends and > family. So, I am between jobs and working on www.EllaZ.com for the next > year or so. > > We are always on the outlook for collaborators and ideas we can > "borrow" :-) > > Cheers . . . Kevin Copple > > > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate > your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED] > ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
