Smart gibberish
The first full week of school always leaves me feeling a little wacked out. We are just SO busy. Every once in awhile I've been able to poke my head out of the deep end and notice little things. Like the fact that our new copy of Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer has not been checked out even once because apparently everyone went out and bought it on its release date. Today, in a rare moment of quiet, Daniel W. alerted me to Jabberwacky, a chatbot that claims to learn. As people chat with it, it uses contextual pattern matching techniques to build appropriate responses. So, instead of using a bunch of linguistic rules, it builds on feedback from users to "learn" - or at least get better at making conversation. Sort of. Here's the gist of our first conversation:
JW: What is your name?
FH: Frances. What is your name?
JW: My name is my name.
FH: Do you like libraries?
JW: I like my name.
FH: Do you like to read books?
JW: Yes. Who is your favourite author?
FH: J. K. Rowling. Who is your favourite author?
JW: J. K. Rowling.
FJ: Which book do you like best?
JW: Terry Pratchett books.
FH: Me too.
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