

Amazing chat bot developed by a startup claiming to have made a significant AI breakthrough (vid) - nickb
http://www.technologyreview.com/player/07/09/19Greene/1.aspx

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matth
That was altogether pretty lame. Having done some NLP and chatterbot
development in the past, I don't see anything here out of the ordinary. In
fact, it seems as though they're just trying to impress folks who don't know
any better.

People like them (Cognitive Code) give AI research a bad name. As always, put
up or shutup.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
His questions covered only very narrow territory. But she was able to connect
different parts of the conversation quite well. If you call that lame you're
going to run out of words to describe 90 % of the software that's being
created (including much of what I've done myself to be honest)

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ecuzzillo
Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crap.

This applies _especially_ to attempts at NLP.

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ericb
What they have is impressive at least as an implementation of AI window
dressing. It did a decent job with context assuming this was not overtly
scripted as they claim.

Most notably, though, if sylvia was an astounding breakthrough in the sense
they claim (strong AI) they would have a sylvia chat-window on the website.
The absence of a chat window means they realize if you were to poke at it you
would be let-down. If anyone finds a sylvia instance to chat with, please post
it.

<http://cognitivecode.com/>

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Tichy
Didn't watch till the end, but in the first few minutes it did not show any
learning, or did it? That would have been interesting, like SILVIA doesn't
know an answer to something, guy explains, SILVIA understands and reiterates
in her own words.

I am not holding my breath on this one. Especially, why did they bother to
create the face and voice recognition? Seems to me creating good conversations
is hard enough, I don't see anybody making a breakthrough in that having spare
time to create a pretty talking face thingy.

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chaostheory
unless we can interact with it (Silvia) ourselves... it's really hard to
believe

This makes it a little more believable:
<http://cognitivecode.com/products.html#studio>

~~~
kmt
> unless we can interact with it (Silvia) ourselves... it's really hard to
> believe

Agree.

> This makes it a little more believable:
> <http://cognitivecode.com/products.html#studio>

Not really. You can't really download or get it until some future release
date, so who knows how good this thing is.

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ks
Some of those "answers" have to be scripted

~~~
g00dn3ss
Yeah, but he could ask the questions in any order!

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RevolutionsEnd
This shows nothing about A.I. Only some good speech recognition software.

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henning
You know that if you ever got to use that when no one was looking over your
shoulder that you'd immediately start saying the most obscene things you could
think of. Everyone does.

~~~
michaelneale
That would be a better turing test. If you talk dirty to it, and then you feel
bad about it after the fact (because of how it responded) - then it has passed
__.

 __Some may say "aroused" by it but the thought is too disturbing.

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michaelneale
I want to believe, but an prepared for disappointment.

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tocomment
extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

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jkush
"Is it afternoon already? I'm afraid I don't have a good sense of time."

You're telling me that "she" didn't know what time it was?

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rugoso
agree, pretty lame that they dont show a believable, casual conversation with
someone not related to the project

still, this bot seems many times more articulated than me :P

