Chatterbots

The first time I saw the word, "AI" ("Artificial Intelligence"), was when I used a small computer program called ECC-Eliza many, many years ago. This is the first program I've ever used that could "talk" to me! I was amazed at that time, when I still did not really know how a computer functioned and what it could do. I tried to "talk" to it using all kinds of funny combinations of words and felt very curious about what and how it responded. Surely it didn't "talk" like a human, and, at most times, its responses were totally unrelated to what I "said" or "asked". I would feel very impatient sometimes, because I was like talking to a parrot which kept saying the same thing over and over. Nevertheless, I chatted with it for quite many times, as sometimes it would throw me some laughable phrases which I considered jokes. One interesting thing it could do was that it could kick me out of the chat session and terminate itself if it did not feel like talking to me. It did this especially when I "spoke" dirty words, or kept repeating myself (although it could do so without problem), or "said" something that it told me not to say. After playing with it for some time, I felt bored with it and stopped using it. At this point of time, ECC-Eliza was the only program I know that could chat. So, later, whenever I heard of the word, "AI", I thought of ECC-Eliza.

More than a year later, I discovered another AI, called Billy, when my friends bundled it with their own program for an inter-school competition. Billy, as it seemed to me, was much more intelligent than ECC-Eliza. Why do I say so? Because it could learn more and faster! But my earlier experience with Billy was not good, because it knew almost nothing in the beginning. Unless I used a Billy that had chatted with many people, I had to train it for a long time before it could even "say" the most basic things. Billy had very little "built-in knowledge" but had no limitation in learning, whereas ECC-Eliza had very much "built-in knowledge" but was very limited in learning. People might say that a Billy was whom it had talked to. The reason is obvious. Anyone could train their own Billys and give these Billys to their friends. This time, I knew how to use the Internet to find more information about AI. And so I discovered a lot more AIs. I also learnt that what I called "AI" could also be referred to as "AI bot", "bot", "chatterbot", or simply "chatbot". And "AI" did not only mean a program that chats. A little bit of research was enough to prove this. I got a lot of information about AI (especially of chatterbot type) and used many different kinds of chatterbots. I was interested to learn more about them.

Years past. I must admit that I didn't learn much about AI, because it is another field of study that requires time and efforts. Just recently, I found a link to the familiar The Chatterbox Challenge website, which is a place where many creators bring their chatbots to challenge each other to see which chatbot is the most intelligent. It should be a great place for me to once again start meeting some new smart chatterbots.