Week 2: CHATTERBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

RESEARCH REPORT:
CHATTERBOTS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

September 10, 2005

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) and Speaking Machines are topics of interest in computerized communication. In a graduate level Communications course at Quinnipiac University, students were asked to write about the topics in an online threaded discussion. Student voiced their observations, questions and opinions within a discussion that consisted of at least 138 messages.

COMPUTER ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
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CHATTERBOTS
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Norbert Weiner made an interesting point in 1954. In my comment, I wrote, �When the use of AI gets beyond our control, what will we do? As Weiner says, we cannot put the genie back in the bottle! How would we control the AI computer? Perhaps we would write a situational program to give it directions in case it wants to perform an action that humans consider to be a catastrophe.� (Gabrielle Strassmann, Tue Sep 06 2005 00:10, Automation's effect on society)
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I personally would not trust Eliza because I know that it is programmed to respond with a certain pattern. In my opinion, Eliza was considered to have a human at work behind the machine because it behaved according to the Rogerian pattern of psychotherapy. Patients may have felt safer having the conversation with an automaton, than with a human doctor. (Gabrielle Strassmann, Tue Sep 06 2005 21:31, Re: Machine as Human Being and Human Being as Machine)
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AI scientists acknowledge that Chatterbots need much improvement. Speaking machines are not as advanced as other technologies of AI. However, speaking machines are already widely used in business today. For example, when dialing for “Information,� with “411� the caller uses a form of Chatterbot to find a telephone number. The technology is also used by large corporations to automatically channel its callers. It is successful because the use of the program is very limited. Bots are successfully used by companies such as Microsoft, IBM and CYCORP. According to Ai of Tel Aviv, Cycorp is the world’s largest common sense project. The CYC Project is creating a knowledge base of interlinked information that is made of hand-coded rules and assertions. CYC is building a computer that may be capable of human-like reasoning in the future.

It was an enjoyable exercise that gave meaning to what I have read.