Computers know how to talk to people

Last week, the clever smart computer program Cleverbot surprised the world with a brilliant performance with Turing - an IQ test for chatbot, or talk robot. The results show that Cleverbot seems to be able to make conversations like people.

In the Turing test invented by British computer scientist Alan Turing in the 1950s, chatbot participated in typed conversations with people, and tried to deceive them so they thought they were children. people. (Some people even accidentally chat with people who pretend to be chatbot.) At a recent Turing contest, Cleverbot made 59% of its people think it was a human being.

How did programmers have to equip Cleverbot with lots of conversation, context and reality?

The father of Cleverbot, Rollo Carpenter has brought the answer: It's simply a gathering source, like a Wikipedia search for conversations.

Evie, a representative of chatbot uses Cleverbot software. (Livescience)

Since appearing online in 1997, Cleverbot has participated in about 65 million conversations with Internet users around the world, 'chat' for fun through Cleverbot websites. Similarly, when people learn to behave appropriately from the actions of their social group members, Cleverbot also learns from conversations. It stores it all in a large database, and in each future conversation, it answers questions and ideas that mimic those who have previously talked to it and have good questions. similar story.

For example, if you've ever asked Cleverbot, 'Are you OK?' , it will review the times it asked or asked and choose an appropriate response. Because it gives an answer that has been typed by a person, the way the story takes place will be the same as humans (at least in theory).

The key to Cleverbot's success is that it does not react entirely on the data of previous conversations, but it keeps track of the words and phrases given in the existing conversation. As Mr. Carpenter explains, 'Cleverbot reviewed the whole conversation and could have tens of thousands of people who answered the question' Is it OK? ' and choose which of them is the most appropriate answer for the new dialogue. '

The online versions of Cleverbot searched its database only three times before making a response. But the new version used in the Turing contest made 42 database searches.'It's a superiority to Cleverbot online,' Carpenter said.

Carpenter's genius is simply to apply the basic programming principle - to allow Cleverbot to grow more and more intelligent, like a person who gradually matures.

One of the questions raised for Cleverbot in the contest: 'How do you get smarter?'

Cleverbot: 'I don't really believe that people can be' smarter '. A person can become more knowledgeable, not smarter. "