Hi - Having a little time on my hands, I thought it might be
amusing to try to rewrite the program Eliza the Nondirective
Therapist for the web. (The program, originally written in
1966, conducts a conversation of sorts with the user --
mostly by "reflecting" the user's input in simple ways, and by
saying "I see" and "Please go on" in a manner presumed
to be like what nondirective therapists say to their clients.
Eliza also picks up on a small number of "key words"
to suggest topics to the "client.")
I discover that such programs can be found here and there
on the net, and that one name for them is 'chat bots' ('bot'
is apparently short for robot but I don't have a very good
sense of which programs are called bots -- they seem to be
a varied lot.)
Before further struggling to reinvent the wheel -- or the bot --
do any fellow tipsters know of or use web-based conversation
programs of merit as teaching demos? The point might be to
show their linguistic limitations or to introduce a discussion of
what 'understanding' really is (a la Searle's Chinese Room) or
perhaps you know of a bot that really can act in the manner
of a useful Artificial Expert.
-David
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David G. Likely, Department of Psychology,
University of New Brunswick
Fredericton, N. B., E3B 5A3 Canada
History of Psychology:
http://www.unb.ca/web/psychology/likely/psyc4053.htm
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