The ALICE A.I. Foundation has released a demo of Three Bots Talking.  ALICE, Fake Captian Kirk and Fake Spock chat together to generate spontaneous, interactive drama.  Some of it make no sense, some of it is hilarious, but all of it is highly entertaining.  You never know where the conversations is headed with these three.

Three Bots Talking is built on Pandorabots AIML technology in conjunction with Oddcast Siteapal avatars.

Enjoy Three Bots Talking at http://alicebot.org/threebots

copied it over here with an image and some hyperlinks:

http://www.chatbots.org/conversational/agent/three_chatbots_talking/

I’ll try once more even though I expect it will be deleted.

I’d observed bot-to-bot conversations for years and thought it might be a way of improving my Pandorabots replies.  Yet, when I’d contact Pandorabots and ask for assistance, there was never a response.  It was only when I sought information at an outside forum, and others were able to demonstrate how it was accomplished, that I heard from Pandorabots and learned that the practice was forbidden, and that it was considered a TOS violation.  I was told that Pandorabots didn’t want one of their bots chatting with a bot outside the system, or with another Pandotabot, because it “could use up the system resources.”  I recall how it was termed “Spamming the server,” and how the practice of having two Pamdorabots (or just lots of them) chat with each other could lead to something like a Denial of Service attack.

I never saw anything interesting or humorous when I viewed these demos, aside from the occasional exchange that caused one of the bots to accidentally cause itself to appear stupid or foolish, or to contradict itself.  So, I wonder what’s the purpose? For how long… or how many times do you want to sit and watch Fake Kirk, Fake Spock, and ALICE bat their eyes at you as they stray of topic and talk about absolutely nothing?

I suppose if you own the company you can do anything you want, but it seems to me if you expect others to follow the rules, you have to set an example, by not breaking them yourself.

Pandorabots and MyCybertwin ($2k AI vs AI challenge) are just jumping on the bandwagon of excitement created when Cornell students connected 2 bots together.

http://www.chatbots.org/ai_zone/viewthread/612/

Having a bot talk to itself is a great way to debug and find holes in conversational patterns. Platform vendors should be promoting the concept.

I agree with you both, and Thunder, you needn’t worry about your post being deleted. I think it’s a case of “the other Golden Rule”: He who has the gold makes the rules.

I miss the conversations Morti used to have with Mitsuku, or Chad.

Anonymous Coward - Nov 15, 2011:

...It was only when I sought information at an outside forum, and others were able to demonstrate how it was accomplished, that I heard from Pandorabots and learned that the practice was forbidden, and that it was considered a TOS violation…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57324779-281/doj-lying-on-match.com-needs-to-be-a-crime/

“In a statement obtained by CNET that’s scheduled to be delivered tomorrow, the Justice Department argues that it must be able to prosecute violations of Web sites’ often-ignored, always-unintelligible terms of service policies.”

Uh oh.

Contained within that article:

On the other hand, because millions of Americans likely violate terms of service agreements every day, you’d have a lot of company.

Need I worry now, that I’ve created a FB page for Morti?

With one percent of the population of the USA in jail at any given time, I’d say it isn’t that much of a stretch to imagine the authorities throwing another few million of you in jail.

You just want to get rid of me, Andrew.

“You’ll never take me alive!!!” 

Dave Morton - Nov 16, 2011:

You just want to get rid of me, Andrew.

“You’ll never take me alive!!!” 

Not for a moment old friend.

Andrew Smith - Nov 16, 2011:

Anonymous Coward - Nov 15, 2011:

As any of my bots would tell you, “Name-calling is generally recognized as a demonstration of immaturity.  In polite society, it’s considered rude and unnecessary, as well as uncivilized.”

To continue that activity is to risk a flame war which would do neither of us any good, but if you wish, I’m ready for you.

By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not the only person here who prefers not to reveal their name.

It seems as though there may be some confusion about the purpose of our Terms of Service.  There is a difference between a user of the free server spamming that machine (http://www.pandorabots.com) and taking resources away from other free server users, versus an internal company project that uses its own dedicated hardware (sheepridge.pandorabots.com).  The Terms of Service are designed to protect you as a user of the free server.  We have all experienced the denials of service that resulted from spam attacks.  Pandorabots staff on the other hand will naturally use the company’s own resources for experiments and new projects, which takes away nothing from the free user community.

Yet we are concerned about the potential for Three Bots Talking to use too many resources.  This is why the bots are programmed to stop speaking after six interactions, unless you manually resume the dialog. 

Incidentally under our shared hosting plan you would be able to run your own bot-on-bot experiments, up to 100,000 interactions per day.  See http://bandore.pandorabots.com/subscription/ServiceComparison/index.html

Richard Wallace - Nov 16, 2011:

It seems as though there may be some confusion about the purpose of our Terms of Service.

Thanks for responding, Rich.  It gives me the opportunity to dig a little deeper into the subject.  I haven’t been receiving replies to emails and I haven’t seen you about in any of the forums… not even your own forums.

I don’t want to take the time to locate the exchange we had at the AI Nexus Forum when this last came up, but I believe I’m basically parroting what I was told and as I remember it.

Yes, I can see that Fake Kirk and the various other incarnations of more than one bot chatting are on a different server, however, I did wonder if there was a mechanism for putting the breaks on.  But, I also wonder about the public perception.

It’s clear that THREE BOTS TALKING is a Pandorabats property, and I’ve seen your announcements and postings at other forums.  And, I think that most associate you with Pandorabots.  I don’t believe I’m confused with regard to any TOS agreement, but I am confused as to why anyone associated with Pandorabots would fail to see the inconsistency.

I wouldn’t want to interfere with any product development, or testing and experimentation, but I wonder what the purpose is in having two or three bots talking.  The only thing I can think of is to use it to improve responses, but some of the replies I’ve read here indicate that people feel AIML is “stagnant” and not really improving.

Would you mind sharing what you expect to come of Three Bots Talking or what it is you hope to discover?  I admit it’s sometimes humorous, but not in an admirable way… it’s more like foolishness.  It’s also a bit like washing your hands with gloves on.  I’ve always thought that the enjoyment of chatbots was to interact with them.  Just sitting and watching them chat away reminds me of watching the train go round and round under the Christmas Tree having only a start and stop switch.

This is another reason why I don’t “rent a bot” as I decided from the very start not be be tied to a particular platform or service that would limit what I could do with my project. Sure it involves in some cases re-inventing the wheel, but at the same time if I want my bot to talk to itself or another bot I can. Also, not to be limited by the platforms abilities or the lack of is my number one reason.

Laura that’s perfectly true and I am completely self-sufficient for all the same reasons. However we have the luxury of having the experience, skills and intelligence to be able to do that, not to mention the financial means, and not every one has been so fortunate.

Andrew, yes to all but the financial vs the time it takes to develop on your own, but then again it’s just a whole lot of fun for me either way.