Hello.

I have really enjoyed getting to learn ChatScript so far.  I see lots of advantages over this technology over AIML.  Thanks for all your hard work.

I am helping to mentor a CS student who is interested in chat bot technology.  My student collaborator and I are thinking about building a chatbot that would pretend to be a person from history.  Just to pick someone as an example, let’s say I wanted to create a chat bot of Ben Franklin.

Is this feasible?

I do have a background in machine learning and AI.  I am familiar with the basics of AIML.  So… I know that the human person too complex to model in ChatScript.  My collaborators, however, are trying to create a bot that’s good enough for a museum.

If one would work full time on this bot, how many months would it take to have completed?
- 4 months?
- 8 months?
- 13 months?

On behalf of my student and I… we really appreciate your time…..

Twitter: @michaelrosario

So, for sue and I to build a character would probably be four person months of work.  But we are practiced at it and splitting design and scripting tasks.
For someone else who is not fluent, I would presume 8 months should not be exceeded on the task, which includes research and authoring and scripting.

The thing about a museum is people will only talk briefly with it. So in some sense it does not need to be in depth on any topic. And maybe they will only ask historical fact questions. But if they ask a question like “what was it like living in the Royal Court in Paris?” odds are you won’t have programmed an answer. And you probably don’t have time to generate a really big quibble system to stall past such things while then leading them into something related. 

So it’s a challenging but interesting task.  Best of luck.

Bruce.  Thank you very much for the quick reply.  This really does help.