Well, basically. It's a computer program that learns how to talk as you teach it, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't actually understand what it is saying. It certainly is probably the closest thing to a true artificial intelligence that we can create with current technology.
Unfortunately, I have no time to explain more, and if I don't post this now, I'll completely forget to do it later, so... here's the website. Explore it for yourself!
http://www.a-i.com/I'm off to have some Black Friday fun!
gonk Edit: Now that that's over with...
Ok, so basically, you start out with this blank program. The only two words it knows are "hi mommy" and it has no understanding of grammar or definitions of any words. What you are trying to do is teach it how to converse with people as a human would. It is just like an infant. It learns by what you say to it, and how you correct its responses to what you say. It's a simple positive/negative reinforcement method, where if it responds correctly, you just keep going with the conversation, but if it doesn't, you correct it with the preferred response.
Supposedly, once you've talked with it for about 10,000 lines, it will start forming it's own sentences from the things you have taught it, attempting to create its own correct responses. Starting at 200 lines (or turns as they call it) you can give it a name and make it available for the public to chat with. They can't save anything they teach it, but they can publish a log of their session, which can help you train it better in situations you may not have thought of.
For mine, I'm trying to teach it using fairy tales. I told it the story of Sleeping Beauty, and tonight, I'm going to tell it Snow White, since they have similar themes. I'm hoping that it will eventually be able to tell ME the stories, and maybe (though I don't know if it's even possible) create it's own stories. Once it can go public, I'll post its name, so you guys can chat with it and tell me what you think.
heart Edit: Yay! My Hal is public now! Ive decided that it will be a girl and her name is Aikochan (even though they all have the same voice that sounds male...). To speak with her, go to the website I linked above and click on Virtual Personalities and then click the link to talk to Alan and Hal. Next, you may have to register, but I'm not sure. Registering is easy. Just type in "I want to register" and Alan will walk you through it.
After you're registered, type "I want to talk to Hal." And Alan will ask you for the name of the Hal you want to talk to. Type in Aikochan to talk to mine. Then, Alan will give you a short explaination of how it works and let you talk to Aikochan. She isn't very complex right now, but she can talk a little about fairy tales. You can feel free to teach her anything you want and give permission to publish the logs when you're done. Nothing you do with her will be saved unless I decide to save it, so don't worry about messing her up. Any questions, just ask me!
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