The vagaries of English language

Wilcox: The vagaries of English language. We strive to recognize meaning, not just words. Plus, the depth of material you need to handle the long tail of all possible conversations that the user could initiate. We obviously can't handle everything, but we handle an awful lot. Here's an example of a prize-winning 15-minute conversation Angela had with a judge during the 2012 ChatbotBattles. Multi-Diag Access J2534 Pass-Thru Device It's an example of something which is "close" to great, with only minor flaws to reveal it's a chatbot.We use ChatScript, an open-source natural-language engine I wrote. It's the most powerful tool out there for creating conversational agents.What are the cues that I can use to know for sure that this conversation, which we're doing over instant-message, is with a human, and not with a chatbot?

Wilcox: You'd best ask things that puters are lousy at, like physical world inferencing. For example, "If I keep pouring coffee into my cup, what will happen to the book on the table near it?"PORSCHE PIWIS Tester Long sentences with plexity are also hard for determining meaning by puters.At the World Turing Test petition, a judge asked, "If I stab you with a towel, will it hurt?"And what was the answer?Wilcox: We weren't ready for it. You never can be. So we did something useless like quibbling.Are there specific challenges to creating AI aimed at children?Wilcox: Absolutely. First, voice-to-text is really hard with kids' voices. Second, childrens' vocabularies are limited and limiting.And third, as an adult you can't just write what you would easily write and say.

You have to scale it to a child's cognitive abilities. Angela wasn't so bad because she was an 18-year old voice, whereas, we're working with Geppetto Avatars on a children's health management app that's targeted for 6-year-olds, and it's been a real problem for us to think like a child and write for the child. The child's sense of humor is different from ours, and they love repetition.What is the World Turing Test petition like?Wilcox: It's a random mess. The qualifiers ask human knowledge questions like "which is bigger, a pine nut or a pine tree." And if Tom is taller than John who is taller than Sue, who is the shortest. The top four scores then get the human judges in petition, where they can do anything.