

Artificial chatting utility matching algorithmic nodes - seanlevan
http://acuman.us/?
Thanks for all the feedback! Unfortunately, I cannot respond to all of you because Hacker News has some kind of spam system set up that stops me from it.
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bt3
For me, something would appear, then quickly disappear. Couldn't really tell
if it was a response or a "loading" screen.

Nonetheless, I'm rather impressed coming from someone your age.

Edit: had some mild success asking about the weather. "You're asking what's
the weather? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's ' face and
withstand with courage'."

~~~
seanlevan
I just checked, and you're right, there was a modification in the code that I
made that broke the bot just now. The bug is fixed now, so feel free to try it
again. Thank you for testing and checking it out.

~~~
bt3
Just asked it where Allen Field House is... got this:

"I don't have a good sense of navigation, so I don't know exactly where is
allen field house, but it seems to be interesting."

I was expecting it to spit out "Lawrence, Kansas", but I liked the response
nonetheless.

On an unrelated note, have you considered adding like a little spinner or
loading icon or something? Although you clearly state it'll take 30ish
sections for a response, I can't help but think that I'm staring at a blank
page when I'm sure there's a lot going on in the background. Even if it's
purely cosmetic, a "loading" icon might serve to show that 1) something is
happening, and 2) make 30 seconds seem shorter since we're looking at
something dynamic versus static.

~~~
seanlevan
Thanks! Good advice, and I'll work on implementing a spinner right now.

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builtinnya
I asked "What is the answer to the Universe, Life, and everything?" and it
replied "The answer to the universe, life, and everything is 42 (according to
Douglas Adams' humorous science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy)". It seems pretty smart :)

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seanlevan
Thank you! I spent a lot of time on it so I love to hear things like that. :)

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lynchdt
Nice job man, this is some great work for somebody your age. I know 'senior
engineers' twice your age who couldn't write these notes, nevermind code it
up.

[http://acuman.us/about.txt](http://acuman.us/about.txt)

Are you sharing source?

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seanlevan
For now it's closed source, but I'm considering making it open. :) For now, I
don't want to, because I'm entering competitions in this field.

Thank you for your kind words.

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RIMR
Eh, I'm not sure that I am using it right, but it hasn't given me a correct
answer yet...

I have asked it complicated things like "What is largest unmanned artificial
satellite", and "What is the combined population of Oregon, Washington,
British Columbia and Alaska".

I have also asked it simple questions like "Who was the fifth vice-president
of the USA". It answered this one "interesting person".

It answers everything as "interesting". The only question it actually answered
so far was "What is the population of the USA", which it incorrectly
calculated as 32 Million.

Good work though, keep working the bugs out of it.

~~~
seanlevan
Thank you for the encouragement, and for pointing out the errors in it. :)

As you probably know, it's still a project in development and it took me a lot
of time to even get it where it is.

It's still based more on conversational aspects; talking about the computer
itself, but usually when it says "interesting", it knows the answer, it's just
some bug that is preventing it.

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lettergram
It doesn't seem to respond to anything I ask...

"What's your name?"

"What color is the sky?"

"Who am I?"

"Why should I ask you questions?"

"Where is New York?

All I get is "gathering response" then nothing.

~~~
seanlevan
It can answer every single of those questions, but there was a glitch that
broke it.

I just checked, and you're right, there was a modification in the code that I
made that broke the bot just now.

The bug is fixed now, so feel free to try it again.

Thank you for testing and checking it out.

~~~
lettergram
Alright, I tested it and it works well! Good job :)

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vitamen
"I'm glad that you like the counting crows, especially the old stuff, but some
new stuff too how about me, though personally I don't like the counting crows,
especially the old stuff, but some new stuff too how about me that much. I'm
just not a fan of interesting."

I don't have any real constructive feedback, but the bot definitely does seem
to have trouble parsing multi-thought sentences.

~~~
seanlevan
Thank you for the feedback, I haven't implemented any algorithm for parsing
(splitting sentences between queries), but it's definitely on my to-do list.
:)

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seanlevan
Thank you, everybody!

In part from your testing and conversations with my bot, its reached over
3,500 questions asked. A mild milestone, I know, but I'm still happy about it.

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nosuchthing
the two special unicode characters (F040, F070) arn't rendering (OSX 10.9, FF
36), and the chatbox doesn't seem active for me

~~~
seanlevan
What do you mean by doesn't seem active, are you referring to its cosmetic?

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nosuchthing
I switched to the "java script heavy" alt page, and it seemed to work except
your "insanely intelligent conversational" chatbot asked what my favorite
musical genre was and after thinking, did not recognize breakcore and tried to
brush it off by asking another question. quiet rude and pompous imho.

impressive project none the less. i would suggest leaving the last response
from the chatbot visible maybe.

~~~
seanlevan
Thank you for your suggestion.

It was pretty time-consuming to get the bot where he currently is, even! And
I'm certainly still working on it.

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cttet
Do you gather information of the topics from the Internet or have a database
storing somewhere?

~~~
seanlevan
A combination of both. :)

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bglazer
Very impressive! I like the styling of the page. What languages are you using?

~~~
seanlevan
Thank you! I programmed the actual bot using PHP, using various algorithms as
shown in its about page.

Regarding the styling, thank you! My favorite aspect of anything is web
design.

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sweedy
Nice one! I really enjoyed it. Works pretty good on Opera.

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seanlevan
Thanks! Glad to hear it. I tried for cross-compatibility as much as possible.

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ycomb
The wait is a bit annoying. But I like the answers.

Ha ha. Acuman knows Chappie.

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seanlevan
Yes, I am aware of that, but it's hard to find a really good answer and
research it and compare it with other answers using the internet without
taking a while to load! Also, I'm dependent on free APIs.

He also knows simsimi and cleverbot.

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dmachop
Able to submit questions in Chrome but not in Firefox.

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seanlevan
That's odd, I don't happen to have Firefox with me, do you know what in the
source code could cause that?

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rascalbrother
Nothing seems to happen when I hit enter.

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seanlevan
That's odd, I don't happen to have Firefox with me, do you know what in the
source code could cause that?

