From: jdorrington@hotmail.com   
      
   Dustan wrote:   
   > Or some other technical title describing programs that attempt to   
   > vaguely lead a conversation.   
   >   
   > First of all, a disclaimer: I've only just come across this group, and   
   > I have no idea what the ethics or rules of this group are. Also, I'm   
   > sure I sound pretty demanding in my message, but what I'm explaining is   
   > not a requirement; it is simply what's on my mind and would be really   
   > cool if I could see something along these lines. Any programs along the   
   > lines of AI, as long as it's within my reach (I can't say I'm great   
   > with following directions), would be nice. I have written "I would like   
   > to see..." (or something to that effect) in front of many of my   
   > sentences below. Imagine that is written in front of all of the   
   > sentences. So, answers for the newbie?   
   >   
   > I would be very interested to see what kinds of programs exist along   
   > these lines, what they can do, etc.   
   >   
   > It would be really cool to see a program that can attempt to vaguely   
   > lead a conversation with a human being (most likely with text input; I   
   > can't imagine that anything resembling HAL exists today; possibly an   
   > underestimation on my part).   
      
   Do some googling for 'loebner prize'. In laymans terms it's a prize for   
   the computer program that can most closely mimic a human in terms of   
   responses to questions and general conversion. (Actually it's a bit   
   more than that, do a google for 'turing test' to know more.)   
      
   Most of the entries to the competition are available online (to   
   converse with rather than with freely available source code).   
      
   > It would also be interesting (though not as much so) to see two   
   > Artificially Intelligent bots interact with full-fledged English   
   > sentences (again, text input is more likely, as far as I can tell). No   
   > cheating here! Plain text input ONLY!   
   >   
   > (In an OOP program, for example, you have to call an object method for   
   > sending a message with only the text input as an argument, and only   
   > that same object method, no matter what the general subject of the text   
   > input, whatever the sentence structure may be, etc. In programs that   
   > follow different structures than OOP, similar limitations would have to   
   > be placed)   
   >   
   > I have a decent amount of experience with python, some experience with   
   > java, and extremely limited experience with C++, so I would like to be   
   > able to see some open-source projects in those languages.   
      
   Try sourceforge, or perhaps do a search for 'Eliza', the source code of   
   which is available in several languages. Also make sure you read up on   
   why 'Eliza'-style AI is so heavily criticised.   
      
   If you know Python I'd suggest you do some searches for Natural   
   Language Parsing, or perhaps visit the group down the hall:   
   comp.ai.nat-lang .   
      
   > Can anyone enlighten me?   
   >   
      
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