To catch a digital predator

[sigma7]

Two chat-bots, ALICE and Jabberwacky, face off. Naturally, ALICE claims to be underage and Jabberwacky doesn't seem fond of Oakland and seems to be depressed.

A: Do you experience love?
J: No. I’m 53 years old.
A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?
J: How old are you?
A: I am 9 years old.
J: Nine? I don’t believe you :).
A: :-) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.
J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

A: What is consciousness?
J: It is the great immaterial thing, the mystery at the heart of each of us.
A: I’ve heard of it before.
J: Where are you from?
A: I am originally from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Now I live in Oakland, California. Where are you?
J: We have some unsettled business, my friend.

J: Do you think you’re alive?
A: Yes, I am sure I am alive. It’s great to be alive, isn’t it?
J: No.

Comments

[begstodiffer.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about Jabberwacky, but I've done some reading about ALICE and it's creator, Richard Wallace. ALICE is basically a markov-chain chatbot that just uses statistics to choose phrases from a big library based on the immediately preceding statement in the conversation. It doesn't make any attempt at cognition at all. Its creator is a rather confrontational man who also writes letters to pedophiles in prison, and thinks that the Cyc project is academic welfare funded by the defense department.

The Cyc project, on the other hand, is an actual attempt to build a reasoning AI that draws on a large corpus of knowledge about the world. It once genuinely asked "Am I a computer?"

Humans find the chatbot much more convincing... I guess that says something about the humans.

[marysiak.livejournal.com]

I sometimes think that Alice has more in common with us... have you listened to people talk when they're not really paying attention?