To converse with 3 varieties of automated characters and to observe what makes for a coherent conversation.
Weizenbaum, "ELIZA" (handout)
Foner, "Entertaining Agents"
Choose any three of the following exercises, and bring a printout or electronic file of the resulting conversations to class, marking the longest consecutive string of coherent exchanges between you and the character. What increased the sense of verisimilitude? Which characters did you find it easiest to converse with?
On Athena, bring up the emacs word processor by typing
emacs
Within emacs do:
escape-x doctor
This will bring up a version of Eliza. Talk to her. Save and print out your best conversation. (Control-X Control-S to save; Control-X Control-C to quit emacs)
Or use this site for Eliza via telnet.
Also in emacs type
escape--x yow
Observe and save the results. Now do this
escape-x psychoanalyze-pinhead
Control-g. will end this routine. Again, observe and save the results. Print it out and on the printout mark the successful interchanges -- the ones that were believable or amusing, that made it seem as if there was conprehension between the two characters. Write a short note indicating what made them work and be ready to talk about it in class.
In the course locker, play with one or more of the characters made last year. See how long you can sustain a conversation.
To do this, on athena do these three steps:
add 21w765j
cd /mit/21w765j/www/ELIZA/Characters
conversation2 <charactername>
Recommended characters: Brat, Gramps, Salesman.
Talk to Michael Mauldin's Julia and visit her homepage.
Play with the Alice, Maur, or the other chatterbots on this website of the Communication Research Centre's CHAT project. Note that these characters are based on a hypertext model of conversation. You might want to read about a previous student's exchanges with these characters, in Freedom Baird's assignment page from last year.
Remember to bring your dialogues to class with you next week, or to post them in the course locker at 21W765j/Spring_97/StudentWork_SP97/Chatterbot_Chats
Margaret Boden Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man, pp. 21-111 (on reserve) (on Colby's work).
Interactive Fiction Syllabus / Spring 1997