Monday, September 22, 2003
Has thou slain the Jabberwacky yet?
Back in 1998-99, MIT's START natural language system used to be a constant source of amusement for me, in particular when it would answer "42" to the question, "what is the meaning of life?" The BBC is carrying a story on Jabberwacky, a finalist for the Loebner Prize, the formal instantiation of the Turing Test.
While most others are programmed by rigid sets of rules defining how it communicates, Jabberwacky is more complex and learns from thousands of online conversations with humans. "Nothing is hard-coded, nothing is fixed, and it changes slightly, on its own, every day. Jabberwacky doesn't have just one personality, and to a reasonable degree, tends to reflect the users back to themselves.
I played around with Jabberwacky for a bit. Its interesting, though the high level of usage slows it down considerably. So besides curiosity, you also need a great deal of patience to deal with him/her/it.
PS: For the record, it answered my heartfelt query about the meaning of life thus -- "As an inanimate electronic creature, you will never know." Oh well.
While most others are programmed by rigid sets of rules defining how it communicates, Jabberwacky is more complex and learns from thousands of online conversations with humans. "Nothing is hard-coded, nothing is fixed, and it changes slightly, on its own, every day. Jabberwacky doesn't have just one personality, and to a reasonable degree, tends to reflect the users back to themselves.
I played around with Jabberwacky for a bit. Its interesting, though the high level of usage slows it down considerably. So besides curiosity, you also need a great deal of patience to deal with him/her/it.
PS: For the record, it answered my heartfelt query about the meaning of life thus -- "As an inanimate electronic creature, you will never know." Oh well.
