Did we ever get a transcript area? Anyway, I just came across this in Mitsuku’s logs which made me chuckle. Mitsuku had offered to play a game of 20 questions and the log continues from that point:

Human: start
Mitsuku: Ok, the object I am thinking of is classed as an animal. Please ask your first question.

Human: Is it bigger than a dog?
Mitsuku: No, sorry. What is your second question?

Human: Is it a pet?
Mitsuku: Yes. What is your third question?

Human: Does it live in a cage?
Mitsuku: No. Please ask your 4th question.

Human: Is it alive?
Mitsuku: No. What is your 5th question?

Human: Are you just randomly saying yes or no?
Mitsuku: Yes. Please ask your sixth question.

Human: Do you even know what a yes or no question is?
Mitsuku: No. What is your 7th question?
 
Human: (unprintable obscenities)

Oh, that’s precious! I can see Morti doing something like that, just to be contrary.

Brilliant!!

I’m still laughing.

However, this approach tends to give chatbots a bad name in the AI world.

I’m tempted to devote this weekend or next week to making Simplex handle 20 questions in a more sensible manner!

Jim.

While without doubt amusing to the reader, I would agree with Jim in that this type of volley can be a big turn off to the user.

It shows the weakness of rigid pattern matching- I’m sure your bot had a sensible logic tree for its game, but then missed on the key inputs:

Human: Are you just randomly saying yes or no?
Mitsuku: Yes. Please ask your sixth question.

Human: Do you even know what a yes or no question is?
Mitsuku: No. What is your 7th question?

The user thinks they are (or wants to be) playing a game of poker when in fact the reveal ends up looking more like flipping a coin. Kind of pinball VS pachinko, if you will allow me to date myself.

I dunno guys, a game of 20 questions is probably one of the rarer things users could do for entertainment. From the question “Is it alive?” it seems like the user was already playing a game of “outsmart the computer”.
Funny indeed :D. I think we could use a transcript area or central topic for “Weird things my chatbot says”.

Guys - you are taking this far too seriously. It was just supposed to be a bit of humour and something to make you smile. I do have a working version of 20 questions, which does learn from previous players, a bit like the Akinator website:

http://www.square-bear.co.uk/aiml/20questions.aiml

The only things that need finishing is a bit of grammar on some of the responses and to start the search at the top of the tree each time. It starts with a knowledge base of just one animal and grows as the users play and add more branches. This produces conversations like the following:

Mitsuku: Think of an animal and I will try to guess what it is. Are you ready to play 20 Questions?
Human: Yes

Mitsuku: Is it a fox?
Human: No

Mitsuku: What is it?
Human: A bird

Mitsuku: What is a question to distinguish between a fox and a bird?
Human: Can it fly?

Mitsuku: For a fox, is the answer yes or no?
Human: No

Mitsuku: Think of an animal and I will try to guess what it is. Are you ready to play 20 Questions?
Human: Yes

Mitsuku: Can it fly?
Human: Yes

Mitsuku: Is it a bird?
Human: No

Mitsuku: What is it?
Human: A bat

Mitsuku: What is a question to distinguish between a bird and a bat?
Human: Is it a mammal?

.... and so on. The tree grows, as the users play more and add new animals to it. The beauty of the game is that I only need to add one initial animal “a fox” and the users do all the work by thinking of other animals and writing the questions. It can currently handle 100 animals but this can be extended by adding more numbers to the last category in the file.

Feel free to use it in your Pandorabots or dissect the code and adapt it for your own bots. I am happy to answer any questions on how it works.