From fork-admin@xent.com Wed Oct 2 17:51:37 2002 Return-Path: Delivered-To: yyyy@localhost.example.com Received: from localhost (jalapeno [127.0.0.1]) by jmason.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DE47216F17 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:51:14 +0100 (IST) Received: from jalapeno [127.0.0.1] by localhost with IMAP (fetchmail-5.9.0) for jm@localhost (single-drop); Wed, 02 Oct 2002 17:51:14 +0100 (IST) Received: from xent.com ([64.161.22.236]) by dogma.slashnull.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g92GQDK16972 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:26:15 +0100 Received: from lair.xent.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by xent.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F55C2940B7; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:26:02 -0700 (PDT) Delivered-To: fork@example.com Received: from smtp1.superb.net (smtp1.superb.net [207.228.225.14]) by xent.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 0300129409C for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 09:25:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 19429 invoked from network); 2 Oct 2002 16:25:59 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO maya.dyndns.org) (207.61.5.143) by smtp1.superb.net with SMTP; 2 Oct 2002 16:25:59 -0000 Received: by maya.dyndns.org (Postfix, from userid 501) id 907FB1B62C; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 12:25:52 -0400 (EDT) To: "Mr. FoRK" Cc: , "Rohit Khare" Subject: Re: ActiveBuddy References: From: Gary Lawrence Murphy X-Home-Page: http://www.teledyn.com Organization: TCI Business Innovation through Open Source Computing Message-Id: Reply-To: Gary Lawrence Murphy X-Url: http://www.teledyn.com/ MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: fork-admin@xent.com Errors-To: fork-admin@xent.com X-Beenthere: fork@example.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.0.11 Precedence: bulk List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: , List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: Date: 02 Oct 2002 12:25:52 -0400 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-10.7 required=5.0 tests=AWL,CLICK_BELOW,KNOWN_MAILING_LIST,NOSPAM_INC,REFERENCES, SIGNATURE_SHORT_DENSE version=2.50-cvs X-Spam-Level: How is this any different from attaching an Infobot or A.L.I.C.E through licq's console-hook? People have been doing that for years, and for over a decade in IRC and the MUDs. ... and the one thing I think we've learned in all that time is that, as a help-desk, it doesn't work. People just don't like talking to robots, especially when the robots, once confused, become imbeciles. I think the humans may feel cheated, deceived and tricked when they discover, as with the Seattle answer, that they are talking to a machine; there's no real intelligence behind that simulated-friendly and therefore empty 'thx'. AIML is clever and cute, but for /practical/ applications as a first line of technical support? It's been tried over and over, and while I /also/ think that it /should/ work, for the most part, people won't use it. What's worse, as we make the NL processing more and more clever, it only means it fails more dramatically; ALICE doesn't just stumble a bit, it starts to drool. And ALICE is the best we have. Like a Dalek: All very impressive when things are going well, but all it takes to betray the chicken-brain inside is a towel over it's ill-placed eye, or a spin off the metal surface ;) In all the prolog-based NL database query systems of the 1980's and other later chatterbot helpdesk projects like Shallow Red, even simpler tries like Ask Jeeves, people very quickly know they're talking to a robot, and the queries anneal to short, truncated and terse database-like verb-noun or just noun-keyword requests. People are just too quick to adapt, and too impatient to forgive a clunky interface, and for now, especially when the /average/ computer user still can't type more than maybe 5-10wpm, NL is a painfully slow clunky interface. Put it this way: Would you login, wake the bot and ask for the Seattle weather, or would you do as we /all/ do and just click the weather icon sitting there on your desktop? Just for fun, here's an interesting conversation between Shallow Red, ALICE and Eliza as they decide to play the Turing Game: http://www.botspot.com/best/12-09-97.htm -- Gary Lawrence Murphy - garym@teledyn.com - TeleDynamics Communications - blog: http://www.auracom.com/~teledyn - biz: http://teledyn.com/ - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." (Picasso)