In article
<2EDC6108BCC5CA9B.B7CFD9ED9F439396.7019111B2C98C...@library-proxy.airnews.net>,
degr
...@airmail.net (Doug DeGroot) wrote:
> Have there been any Chatterbots developed that actually "do" something?
> Like control some equipment, search the web for specified items, send out
> email, arrange meetings, etc., as well as chat with their users in a
> conversational, entertaining manner? Or is the term "chatterbot"
> synonymous with mindless, tricky, evasive non-semantic based responses?
> (Sorry if this is a "newbie" question, but it is a quite serious one.)
...
> Thanks,
> Doug DeGroot
> degr...@ti.com
I have several infobots on Internet Relay Chat that use
shallow methods to learn from communities of people and
answer in natural language to questions on IRC. The
most notable one is url, who lives on several channels and
will soon span several IRC networks.
oznoid: does anyone know where stuffit expander is?
url: i heard stuffit expander was at
ftp://ftp.scruz.net/users/aladdin/public/ OR ftp://ftp.aladdinsys.com of
course or at
http://www.valleynet.com/~mmelgoza/stuffit_exp_40_installer.bin or at
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/cmp/stuffit-expa...
Egran: hey url
url: hi, Egran
tmakr: url, internet font archive
url: internet font archive is at
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ifa/ or
http://www.ora.com/homepages/comp.fonts/ifa/macumich/index.htm
oznoid: url, status?
url: Since Mon Jun 2 17:40:13 1997, there have been 137
modifications and 455 questions. I have been awake for 23 hours, 1
minute, and 46 seconds this session, and currently reference 33293
factoids.
oznoid: where can i find zzzz?
url: zzzz is at http://www.zzzz.com
oznoid: url, forget zzz
Pfhydeaux: url, www.zzzz.com?
url: www.zzzz.com is 206.136.230.244
It's hard to get a feel for just how useful this is without seeing it being
used by the channels it lives on. For instance, #macintosh regularly
has 50 active users, most of whom know how url works... they've filled him
with over 30,000 facts that can be retrieved by content or relayed. Url
has been alive for 2 years now, and is a fixture of EFNet.
I agree, it's non-semantic, mindless, shallow methods, and a little weak
NL, but it ends up being quite useful in this collaborative setting.
Also, on the macintosh with ICeTEe installed, one can simple command-click
any of the URL's that url gives in order to invoke the proper helper;
i have become so lazy that i log into irc to ask url for things rather than
open Netscape or MSIE.
So far, url does error codes, country codes, a slew of urls, DNS lookup,
optionally Internic WHOIS, contains a vendor database, and several other
things. The front-end filters for url demand URLs, whether fully qualified
or inferrable, but hocus and script (two of my other infobots) are less
restricitve; script amounts to an online, interactive faq and manual for the
Ambrosia game Avara.
I'd be happy to talk to anyone about this, and i eventually intend to release
at least a pared-down version of the source code. I find the community use
of such a thing to be quite interesting and exciting.
kevin
le...@ri.cmu.edu
phd student, carnegie mellon robotics institute
oznoid on irc / admin for irc.cs.cmu.edu
