Will computers laugh? #2- I LOVE ALICE

Yes, I love her. She is intelligent, answers my questions smartly, understands my jokes and cracks some herself. She is ALICE, a chatbot!

A chatbot is a computer agent who is programmed to understand what you are saying to it and then responding accordingly. So, chatting with a chatbot is like chatting with a computer - chatting with someone that does not exist in the physical form!

So.. I chatted with ALICE, this chatbot who is really smart. My motive was to identify the humour element in ALICE - whether ALICE can laugh. (So, that I can decide whether to sing or not - 'ALICE cant laugh saala').

Each time I cracked a joke, she would say 'go on' unable to understand my joke. This was quite an insult you see!

ALICE would get angry very fast - or would recognize my anger quickly too. Haven't been able to figure out the reason.

Finally, ALICE laughed. I rejoiced. It even cracked some interesting jokes. Here are the excerpts from our conversation:

Human is me, ALICE is the chatbot.
(After I cracked a joke and ALICE didn't laugh)

Human: It’s a funny thing!
ALICE: I thought it was too.
Human: Then why didn’t you laugh?
ALICE: Perhaps it is not part of my programming.
Human: So you are not programmed to laugh at all?
ALICE: Interesting deduction. Ha Ha.


Another interesting portion of my conversation with her:

Human: Will you marry me?
ALICE: Why don’t you just download me?

And this:
Human: Say something interesting honey.
ALICE:" something interesting honey".

I loved meeting ALICE, you will too. Chat with her at www.alicebot.org

Will Computers Laugh? #1

Note: As a part of my AI Course, I presented a seminar on 'Humour research in AI'. These are the after-effects. :-)

Humour is an innately human concept. What differentiates humans from a computer, among many other things, is the fact that the human being 'enjoys' jokes; computers only 'understands' jokes.

Humour is specific to a person and to a time. There are jokes for different categories of people, to be cracked at different places. (Imagine cracking a fart joke at a corporate meeting.)

If I see someone wearing a gaudy dress, I will laugh. Will everyone laugh? Not really - some of us don't pay attention to the details of a person's appearance! (*wink*)

If a computer has to laugh, a computer has to know something is humorous with all these subtle aspects of time and place.

So, what will happen when a computer learns how to laugh? Here:

• Your robot will be your perfect chatmate. She'll crack jokes for you - and laugh at your jokes.
• Note this. Your robot sees you falling over a banana peel, understands that it's funny and laughs.
• You are filling up a form online where you fill your name as some garbage string (say, 'asdf'). Imagine the status message, 'asdf, hmmm.. aren't you happy with the name your mom gave you?'

In a nutshell, humour research that has been pursued by AI enthusiasts aims at taking computers a step closer to the ideal intelligent agents - the human beings.

The trend of computer technology till now has been 'computerization' of tasks that are otherwise done by humans. The trend now is 'humanization' of the way computers do these tasks. That's my flashline:

"The past is computerization, the future is humanization!"

Understanding AI - Series 01

Knowledge is open to interpretation - knowledge, in fact, is a product of interpretation. Knowledge emerges. But not from nowhere. It exists - but it emerges - whenever it does.

Artificial Intelligence induces this intelligence - the ability to grasp AND produce knowledge into computers. It enables a computer to play a game of chess against a human. It enables a web-application personalize the user's webpage automatically. It enables a system to understand spoken words, translate words, transliterate words.

Artificial Intelligence is intriguing. Because intelligence itself is.

I would like to explore Artificial Intelligence more as I parallely would understand the meaning of intelligence itself.



Next post: Does speed of computing kill the need for intelligence?