Is it just me or has http://www.a-i.com been down for 3 or 4 days now?

Steve Worswick - Aug 8, 2011:

Is it just me or has http://www.a-i.com been down for 3 or 4 days now?

It seems to be back up an running now.

It must be me then, as it still comes up as a 404 here.

Forcing your browser to reload and deleting your cookies is the new “control-alt-delete”—though it is probably an ISP related issue. Either that or those “spooks” that you provoked a few months back have started to move on you. :o

Note date: 2001

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10001139/startup-artificial-intelligence-closed-down.html

>>
Startup Artificial Intelligence closed down

TheMarker.com Staff
09/17/01 - 10:16 AM EDT

Israeli startup Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been shut down, TheMarker.com has learned. Last Thursday the company gave notice to its 40 employers that it has ended its operation. No comment from AI could be obtained.

AI was founded in early 2001 by the former CEO of Magic Software Enterprises (Nasdaq:MGIC), Jack (Yaki) Dunietz, and was active in artificial intelligence. The company was busy developing an “electronic baby” based on academic research and psychological models.

The project aimed to develop a user interface that would enable full verbal communication between man and computer. Using artificial intelligence, it was supposed to give the computer the capabilities of a 15-month old baby.

The development was supposed to take ten years, at the end of which the electronic baby was expected to reach the mental level of a 12 year old child.

The company was apparently closed due to financing difficulties. Yaki Dunietz was the main source of funding of AI. Estimates are the company shutdown cost him several million dollars.

In the course of its activity the company was joined by Formula Systems (Nasdaq:FORTY) veterans, by the former managing director of the Hebrew language portal Walla Gadi Hadar, by the former Sivan Training & Systems Co Ilan Penn, and by former Magic executive Erez Baum.
<<

http://www.a-i.com/show_tree.asp?id=36&level=3&root=33

June 05, 2010 : Ai and ILM release MyBot for iPhone and iPod touch

May 05, 2010 : Ai and ILM Announce MyBot for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch

February 28, 2010 : International Language Machines (ILM) Launches iHAL

October 27, 2009 : International Language Machines Announces iHAL

August 20, 2009 : Ai Releases MyBot for Live Messenger 2009

February 12, 2009 : New Release for MyBot

July 28, 2008 : MyBot for AIM is now available

March 16, 2008 : Ai Announces MyBot for Facebook

February 28, 2008 : Ai Introduces New MyBot Interface

October 29, 2007 : Ai Announces MyBot for the Web

July 19, 2007 : Ai Announces MyBot: A Conversational Virtual Companion

December 19, 2006 : Eyal Pfeifel re-joins Ai Research

March 01, 2006 : Experimental integration of Alan and VO Games interactive content technology

June 12, 2005 : New matching responses feature in HAL3000

January 05, 2005 : Ai releases HAL3000

January 02, 2005 : Ai Announces 2005 Research Objectives

November 01, 2004 : Ai Announces Sponsorship Program

July 12, 2004 : Ai releases HAL2004

April 28, 2004 : Ai launches new log viewing facility

January 01, 2004 : Ai announces 2004 research objectives

November 25, 2003 : Ai announces Private Virtual Personalities

June 10, 2003 : Ai releases HAL2003

November 01, 2002 : LMC2 Competition Canceled

September 02, 2002 : LMC2 Game Submission Update

May 27, 2002 : Ai Announces the Second Learning Machine Challenge

April 21, 2002 : HAL Goes Public

March 18, 2002 : LMC Steering Committee nominated

January 20, 2002 : Ai Announces Learning Machine Challenge Results

November 05, 2001 : 194 Submissions Received for Ai’s Learning Machine Challenge

September 16, 2001 : Ai to Reduce Level of Activities

August 05, 2001 : Ai Announces the Learning Machine Challenge: Win a Game Without Knowing Its Rules

April 01, 2001 : World’s Leading Artificial Intelligence Project Instates Israel’s Internet Pioneer as Vice President of Internet Operations

February 19, 2001 : Scientific breakthrough: Ai’s ‘baby’ computer program learns to converse like a 15 month-old human baby.

January 01, 2001 : Veteran Entrepreneur Takes Helm of World?s First Commercial Research Effort to Create True Artificial Intelligence

August 15, 2000 :  Ai’s revolutionary approach to artificial intelligence presented at the American National Institute of Standards

July 15, 2000 : World’s First Commercial Effort to Create Artificial Intelligence Names One of Field’s Top Experts Chief Scientist

It’s working for me.

Edited to be nice.

It’s a shame if it has closed down. Many people paid $5 for a “mybot”. Some poor guy has been training his bot there for years!

FYI

There are two LEARNING chatbots on Twitter http://twitter.com/twthal & http://twitter.com/beinspace that can apparently access WordNet and which are based on the a-i.com “Alan” engine (http://alan.<a href=“http//www.chatbots.org/company/mybot/”>a-i.com/</a>).  (Just ask the bots!)  I believe these bots have been developed by Eyal Pfeifel http://twitter.com/pfeifel (see December 19, 2006 release above).  Its worth noting that Yaki Dunietz http://twitter.com/YakiDunietz & Erez Baum http://twitter.com/erezbaum can also be found on Twitter.

Steve Worswick - Aug 9, 2011:

It’s a shame if it has closed down. Many people paid $5 for a “mybot”. Some poor guy has been training his bot there for years!

It’s tragic when something like that happens, worse than losing all your data. I hope that there will be some avenue made available for recovering all the effort that people devoted to this project. Once again, it raises the question of “at what point does it become murder to switch off the computer?”

That was the essence of Stanley Kubrick’s movie “A.I.” and was also the subject of a recently published and positively reviewed science fiction novel “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” in which the trainers of artificially intelligent creatures struggle to keep them “alive” after the project’s funding is cut.

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/magazine/fall-2010/fiction-the-lifecycle-of-software-objects-by-ted-chiang

If you ever doubt again, there’s a nifty website that checks if sites are online:

http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/

Best regards,
Stefaan.

Marcus, I’d like to contact Jack Dunietz. Do you happen to have an email address?

Erwin, you can try messaging Dunietz through Facebook

http://www.facebook.com/yakidunietz

That site has been having regular problems for a couple of months at least.  It went down for a week or more for me.  Seems to be a DNS issue as people in other countries could access it at the time.

Roger Davie - Aug 9, 2011:

That site has been having regular problems for a couple of months at least.  It went down for a week or more for me.  Seems to be a DNS issue as people in other countries could access it at the time.

I can still access it from Australia.

You could test the DNS hypothesis by trying to access it via the IP address 62.90.117.221 but you will have to fudge it in your own name server (e.g. add it to your hosts file). The IP address is shared by a bunch of other domains and you get Bad Request (Invalid Hostname) error if the host name is missing from the HTTP request.

FYI

Ai Research (a-i.com) has another company, International Language Machines http://language-machines.com, that makes iPhone apps (see also, releases above):

MyBot Creator for iPhone
http://itunes.apple.com/app/mybot-creator/id375357166
“Teach your bot facts ... through a normal English conversation.”

iHal for iPhone
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ihal/id358399358
“iHal is a conversational learning system, trained to acquire language from a human trainer.”

I believe Dror Kessler http://twitter.com/dror_kessler is behind International Language Machines.  And, his other website at http://www.spellmaze.com seems to be unreachable at the moment.  (“SpellMaze from International Language Machines Ltd is a platform that enables users to interact with a set of words in a fun, easy way.”)