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Name:
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Ethan Elliott-Williams
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Age:
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18
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Sex:
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Male
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State:
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Woodstock, Maine
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Country:
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USA
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E-mail:
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red_scorpain@hotmail.com
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Chatterbots
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Stan
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What gave you the idea of developing a bot?
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It started out as a little project that one of my friends came up with: to
make a bot on IRC that would talk to people who didn't know it was a bot and
try to get funny responses out of them. Somehow I heard about a Chatterbot
contest and decided to develop the original program so that it could
specifically go one-on-one with a person.
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Is creating bots a passion for you? A hobby?
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Entirely and only a hobby. Well, a passion too I guess, but I emphasize
hobby because I rarely spend a majority of my free time working on bots.
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When did you start creating bots? Why?
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I started creating bots around 2 years ago, just as a way to get some laughs
for myself and pass the long, lonely hours of my average day. ;)
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What language is your bot programmed in?
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mIRC script. Not very official, but it's extremely versatile and it gets the
job done.
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How much time do you spend working on your bot per week/month/year?
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Maybe an hour or two a week. Not nearly enough time, but like I said, bots
are only one aspect of my many-faceted personality.
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In your opinion, what are the best qualities of your bot?
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The best quality of my bot - in my opinion - is that he really sounds like
me when I'm talking to someone in real life, which is what I was going for.
People can go different routes when creating a bot, but one of my objectives
was to make him as human as possible. I don't try to give him goofy
responses that nobody would really say in real life because that destroys
the illusion that he is a fellow human being. Basically, because the concept
of the original project was to trick people into thinking a program was a
person, I focused most of my energies into emulating the way a real
conversation works in IRC. When one of my friends says "this bot sounds
exactly like you," I know my work is paying off because that's the quality I
consider the best.
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What is your ultimate goal for your bot?
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I'd guess the obvious goal is to make him as real as possible. To win a
contest, or at least make it to the finals.
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How do you see chatterbots being used in the future?
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I definitely see chatterbots becoming a virtual shoulder-to-cry-on, an
outlet that people could go to when they need to talk to someone. Like a
confessional. Or a psychiatrist. Or a guidance counciler. All of those. And
much, much more.
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Can chatterbots replace humans?
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Sure. There are already many bots that the average human can't distinguish
from humans. Even my initial prototype that I sent rampant over IRC ended up
fooling people into thinking it was a bot 75% of the time. Once chatterbots
have developed to the point where 99% of all humans can't tell whether they
are real or artificial intelligence, there will be no need for true human
contact and the human race will cease to exist. Either that, or humans will
continue to flurish with chatterbots as a mainstay in society.
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What is your favorite bot memory?
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Probably the time on IRC when the bot totally tricked a guy into thinking it
was a girl somewhere. The guy ended up having a 5-page conversation (I saved
the log) with this "girl" and never once figured out that it was a bot. I
knew then that I was on the right track. :)
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What was your worst bot moment?
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Probably the time one of my friends, who knew it was just a program, tried
to confuse it as much as possible. Both my friend and my bot made fools out
of themselves. It wasn't pretty.
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