Chatbots.org Business News

Psychologists nowadays are able to measure human intelligence by using various IQ tests. Nevertheless, they still don’t agree on one common definition of human intelligence. What would happen if we apply a similar approach to measuring intelligence of artificial entities, skipping never-ending discussions on AI definition? According to professor Selmer Bringsjord and Bettina Schimanski an answer is contained in Psychometric AI (PAI).

Creative Virtual is excited to announce that they recently become the Chatbots.org Advanced Business Member with the most contribution points. Chatbots.org is a website set up and maintained by Erwin Van Lun and his team as an industrial catalyst to advance the industry of Intelligent Virtual Characters. In 2011, Chatbots.org launched their Advanced Membership Program which allows companies to become more visible on the site, complete an enhanced membership profile and have access to statistics on their profile including lead reporting. Contribution points are earned by individuals associated with the company for activities such as adding new virtual assistant listings, submitting items for the business news section and leaving comments in various areas around the site. All companies added to the site as being involved with Intelligent Virtual Characters in some capacity are included on the Companies page with Advanced Business Members appearing at the top of the list sorted by years of commitment and contribution points.

With this article I would like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how a system like Elbot is enhanced with new capabilities. I’ll do this by walking through one of Elbot’s newer features: color learning. If you would like to try the feature before reading all the spoilers, please visit Elbot.com, and ask Elbot if he can learn.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy from University of Louisville says that we should be aware of dangerously self-aware chatbots and he suggests to keep dangerous AI entities in virtual prison for avoiding social-engineering attacks. According to him, we should improve cybersecurity, because one day disobeying virtual agents could threaten humanity’s existence.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy from University of Louisville claims that artificial conversational entities, shopping bots, and intelligent software applications became closer in their abilities and intelligence to human beings. Therefore arised the need to recognize and verify the identity of such entities just like it is necessary to authenticate the identity of people.

New, future oriented field of artimetrics, i.e. artificial biometrics, focuses on recognition, verification, and authentication of virtual agents, robots and other nonbiological entities. As a sub-field of cybersecurity, artimetrics is being developed in Cyber-Security Lab, which prides itself on being the world’s first to conduct this kind of research.

This video shows two animated speaking chatbots talking to other. I don’t know the creator nor something about the technology used for AI components, speech technology or avatar animation. I assume that the dialogue is a text to text interaction and that the speech is synthesized (i.e. the speech itself of the other chatterbot is not interpreted).

ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) is definitely the next step. I’m waiting for it!

The robot presented on the video can chat with other humanoid robots via the Internet. Moreover, when faced with a new situation, the robot can search the World Wide Web and gather appropriate information in order to fill an identified knowledge gap. Afterwards, it incorporates new knowledge under its own power, and is ready to execute diverse new tasks.

Present chatbots have rather limited reasoning, inflexible behavior and they lack learning abilities. They perform entrusted tasks in strict accordance with programmed procedures. What if chatbot developers equipped new chatbots with an advanced online-learning mechanism applied recently in intelligent humanoid robots?

We are already in 2012 and for those involved in the industry of chatbots and artificial intelligence it will be an exciting year for sure! Concretely, 2012 has been designated “Alan Turing Year”, commemorating the mathematician, computer pioneer, and code-breaker on the centennial of Turing’s birth.

A survey to find out what functionality users want to see when they interact with a virtual agent - or chatbot - has been launched by chatbot specialists Daden Limited (Daden). Increasing in popularity, chatbots (a computer programme which maintains a conversation with a person using natural language) are seen as a cost-effective support to customer service desks and live chat. Available 24/7, chatbots respond to queries and frequently asked questions enhancing customer experiences and directing visitors to relevant web pages. To consider future development of the industry as a whole, Daden have devised a short online survey to understand what functionality people would like to see in chatbots.

On November 1, 2011 I gave a talk to Google on natural language processing, including chatbot technology and issues in understanding simple English sentences for a story-game demo which tries to act out the sentences. Download the PDF or read full text below.

Fresh Perspectives

I am an AI research engineer. I want to create things that people use, but that stretch the boundaries of the possible. Whatever I work on, I research it and then try to come at it with a fresh perspective. A fresh perspective is something Google and I have in common, though we approach things from opposite directions. Typically my fresh perspectives involve understanding a domain and then writing a new application-specific scripting language to encapsulate insights I have gleaned. Google’s perspectives come from access to massive amounts of data and hardware.

I research everything. I even researched how to give this talk. I thought about making a lot of clever PowerPoint slides. Then I read up on using and abusing PowerPoint. I abandoned that plan.