Dave, keep up the good work. I don’t have ChatScript and I’m running Ubuntu, so I haven’t been able to look at it so far. It would be great if you could perhaps post a video of yourself interacting with your GUI. Or if someone else who’s tried it could post their interaction?

Thanks for sticking up for me C R Hunt.  I really appreciate it, and please,
I hope you don’t mind me saying…

I find the criticism by Thunder Walk and Steve Worswick to be totally awesome!
Their feedback is constructive teamwork that is valuable to development.
And that goes for everyone else… Thanks for your precious support.

For example, I responded to Thunder, by improving the bot to ask for content improvements online.  And look how expert Steve Worswick was able to discover difficult to find flaws in the data set.  I am going to use this feedback to tweak the bot.  So I’m pretty happy about that.

Lastly, read carefully… This is not a criticism to you C R.  Thanks for defending me.
And if I misinterpreted any of your intentions, then I apologize in advance.

Sorry, I assumed you wanted feedback on your bot. I am certainly no expert but was merely pointing out that it didn’t really work.

Open Notepad and copy this into a new .txt document:

fname=inputbox(“Hi! What’s your name?”)
fname=inputbox(“I am called Steve’s Bot!!!”)
fname=inputbox(“Ask me a yes or no question please”)
fname=inputbox(“Yes”)
fname=inputbox(“No”)
fname=inputbox(“Yes”)
fname=inputbox(“No”)
fname=inputbox(“No”)
fname=inputbox(“Yes”)
fname=inputbox(“Sorry that’s all I want to say now”)
x=msgbox (“GoodBye,ttyl “) & fname

Rename it to chatbot.vbs and double click on it. Bingo one bot.

However, what’s the point in it if it can barely answer a question or pass on any information? The technology and interface is immaterial if it doesn’t fit the purpose.

I was pointing this out in my post. My apologies for not drooling over it in awe.

I’m not really sure how to respond, 8pla, if you really think Steve was pointing out “difficult to find flaws”. Part of me thinks you’re being sarcastic, or hoping that by spinning his criticism into a positive light, you are avoiding conflict. You said yourself that your bot had no database, therefore no one could really expect it to respond appropriately to most input. Steve and Thunder Walk’s criticism stems from the fact that you are building interfaces and streamlining code rather than building content. They persist in this criticism despite the fact that the principles you are demonstrating have nothing to do with content. And yet your response seems to indicate that this type of feedback is constructive, rather than missing the point.

Or am I missing the point?

Steve Worswick - Jun 7, 2011:

However, what’s the point in it if it can barely answer a question or pass on any information? The technology and interface is immaterial if it doesn’t fit the purpose.

I suppose this is the crux of the issue. Do you really think interface design is a pointless art without a full-fledged bot ready to be hooked up to it? GUI development is a field in itself, with computer scientists and artists who have built their careers solely on creating the interfaces for others’ code. I think many applications for chatbots are well-known, so you can build an interface for a specific type of bot without having to go through the considerable and ancillary work of building the bot itself.

My own project, incidentally, has taken the opposite tack. I have no interface beyond the command line and frankly GUI development isn’t really a priority at all. But someday it will be an issue, and if someone in the mean time develops a python-supported chatbot interface, then more power to them! I’d love to take advantage of it.

C R Hunt - Jun 7, 2011:

... and if someone in the mean time develops a python-supported chatbot interface, then more power to them! I’d love to take advantage of it.

Heres a basic robot interface in python: http://79b.org/python/index.py
to a python testbot with a test data set probably smaller than Steve’s vbscript yes-no-bot.

It would run your full python chatbot wonderfully in FireFox on your Ubuntu LAMP localhost.

I’m looking at your source code, 8pla, and I can’t figure out how you’re connecting with the python software. I’m assuming this is the script doing the work:

But I’m a complete novice when it comes to web development and have no clue what’s going on server-side to run the python code and grab the bot’s response. If you’ve got the time, could you clarify this or point me to a site with more information? Simply interested for my own edification.

Edited to add: Javascript and I have an abusive relationship, if you can’t tell. Perhaps I simply need to brush up those skills—another activity for another time…

Before posting early this morning I had a chat with the latest offering and had similar results.

>> Do you roll?
<< Hi. What seems to be your problem?

>> I have no problems.
<< That is interesting. Please continue.

>> I have nothing more to say.
<< How do you do. Please state your problem.

>> What do you know?
<< Does that question interest you?

>> How many people have you talked with today?
<< What is it you really want to know?

>> What is the capital of China?
<< Are such questions much on your mind?

>> Who is your favorite author?
<< What do you think?

>> What is 1+1?
<< What answer would please you most?

>> How are you?
<< Are you positive they are you?

>> What is your name?
<< Why are you concerned over my What is?

>> Why don’t you have any real answers?
<< We were discussing you not me.

>> What are you?
<< What is it you really want to know?

With regard to the above conversation, my point is this:

I can provide a long list of Pandorabots that say virtually nothing.  One I recall replies to every question by saying, “I don’t have an answer for that.”  Another responds with name-calling and profanity no matter what you say or ask.  Lots have replies that are completely unrelated to the human input.

Are these really chatbots?  Given the broad definition, I suppose, yes.  The real question is, of what value are they?

As for broken records…

I couldn’t have put it better.  Tomorrow, or the next day, or some day after that, we’ll be presented with a new way of creating a chatbot.  Maybe it’ll be an email chatbot, or a calendar chatbot, or one that functions when you mix peanut butter and jelly.  But what purpose does it serve other than to allow someone to once again say, “Look at me, look at what I have done”?

C R Hunt - Jun 7, 2011:

I’m looking at your source code, 8pla, and I can’t figure out how you’re connecting with the python software.

You got it right.

C R Hunt - Jun 7, 2011:

I’m assuming this is the script doing the work:

function Robot(activate) { 
  var activate = (activate) ? activate : ((event) ? event : null); 
  var node = (activate.target) ? activate.target : ((activate.srcElement) ? activate.srcElement : null);
 if ((activate.keyCode == 13) && (node.type=="text"))  {return false;} 
} 

Correct C R. , but you may disregard that function. I think it was an optional way of clicking the submit button by pressing enter. I just removed that optional code, to simplify it to only the essential functionality, and everything still works by clicking the submit button.  But, yes, you were right about that.

C R Hunt - Jun 7, 2011:

If you’ve got the time, could you clarify this or point me to a site with more information? Simply interested for my own edification.

Yes.  For starters, I just wrote a Python robot interface for novices in under 50 lines of code:
http://79b.org/python/chatbot.py , a sample site for you with less information, to make it easier to see, how a python console robot may run in a browser. Do you have http://localhost working on Ubuntu?  It’s an intranet, which is like having a little private internet on your computer that nobody but you sees.  It’s fantastic for testing a web-based robot, without actually uploading it to the Internet.

I’m still not sure what’s happening here. The only line of script that actually interacts with the python code seems to be

but the actual way in which javascript sends the text to the python program and collects the output isn’t clear. What is the interface? My only experience with web development using python is clicking around the python.org wiki on the subject. So forgive me if I’m missing something obvious…

EDIT: [removed] = javascript~: (minus ~) <—The forum does not seem to like this word. What’s the deal?

Thunder Walk - Jun 7, 2011:

Tomorrow, or the next day, or some day after that, we’ll be presented with a new way of creating a chatbot.  Maybe it’ll be an email chatbot, or a calendar chatbot, or one that functions when you mix peanut butter and jelly.  But what purpose does it serve other than to allow someone to once again say, “Look at me, look at what I have done”?

Well, here’s my bot with the same questions. Of course the flow of the conversation is stilted because my bot didn’t answer the same way as the bot tested, and those answers provoked questions which wouldn’t necessarily be prompted by my bot’s answer. But anyway, the point of this exercise is to show 1) that my bot is useful to me for information retrieval; 2) I get a laugh out of it sometimes (from the In Soviet Russia agent, or the MegaHAL agent :) 3) if at first it doesn’t give me the answer I’m looking for, the next time I ask it might (as in the “capital of China” example or the “What is 1+1” example); 4) often the answers surprise me (I wasn’t expecting either of the previous two corrected answers); 5)  I can give the bot feedback to change its answer (as in the “favorite author” question: first it uses “gagent” to respond, but gagent doesn’t have pronoun substitution in it, so I can tell it to downgrade gagent’s future responses, and then when asked again it responded, slightly more appropriately, with logicagent. I probably should have done the same thing with the “How many people have you talked to today” response as well…).

> Do you roll?
No I do not roll. Do you? I chat with people on the Web.

> I have no problems.
In Soviet Russia, no problems have YOU!

> I have nothing more to say.
That’s nice. I have a lot of good gossip.

> What do you know?
A herbivore is an echo in here!  There is an animal that eats both plant and animal farm.

> How many people have you talked with today?
Okay, How many people have you talked with today.

> What is the capital of China?
Rhythm is the capital of china?

> What is the capital of China?
Some people call it “Beijing”, others “Peking”.

> Who is your favorite author?
I don’t know what your favorite author is.

> who said that?
gagent said I don’t know what your favorite author is.

> gagent: stfu
My threshhold is now 2, and my score_mod is 0.

> Who is your favorite author?
I don’t know what my favorite author is.

> What is 1+1?
1+1 is ok 6 the royal edition 1 of 2,11 min - jul 8, 2009uploaded [...]

> who said that?
logicagent said 1+1 is ok 6 the royal edition 1 of 2,11 min - jul 8, [...]

> logicagent: if input =~ /\d+\+\d+/ then score -= 2 end
What is 1+1?  2

> How are you?
Everything is going extremely well.

> What is your name?
trane

> Why don’t you have any real answers?
Do I need it?

> What are you?
meI am , an artificial linguistic entity. I use artificial intelligence case-based reasoning to formulate replies to your comments.

>

C R Hunt - Jun 8, 2011:

I’m still not sure what’s happening here. The only line of script that actually interacts with the python code seems to be

<body onload="[removed] document.frm.say.focus();" > 

but the actual way in which javascript sends the text to the python program and collects the output isn’t clear. What is the interface?

Very Good C R, that’s the starting point for Python to interact with the user, and that process repeats every time the user clicks the submit button.  There’s a log to keep track of what was processed previously. We are combining Python to retrieve the data and HTML to display the results. all in a single python source code file.

What is the python source code file?

It’s a simple code text file with a .py extension that looks similar to this:

Fig 1. Python source code file: helloCR.py

With localhost setup on Ubuntu
and file helloCR.py saved to /var/www directory,
It displays in a web browser like this:

http://localhost/helloCR.py

NOTE: This is formatted for demonstration purposes.
The actual website used is http://79b.org/python/helloCR.py

I think she was asking specifically about the source for the bot itself, Tom; not code for a simple “hello world” script.