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February 9, 2013 3:44 PM   Subscribe

Cleverbot.com has been touted as one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever. The website allows users to chat with the A.I. Cleverbot. But how good is it, really? I sat down with Cleverbot and collaborated on a movie script. What follows is a movie written by a machine.
posted by FirstMateKate (18 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Had me laughing at some of the exchanges. :) Strictly speaking, though, Cleverbot is a Chatterbot, not an AI. If it were an AI, it would have comprehension (which would presumably cause the script to make more sense :)

Then again, if you asked a little kid similar questions, you might end up with similar nonsense (I remember some guy made a YouTube video a while back with a kid who was asked to describe a hero - hilarious stuff, if someone remembers where it is).
posted by jyc at 4:10 PM on February 9, 2013


After seeing this, I'm convinced Michael Bay could use cleverbot to increase the quality of his movies.
posted by axiom at 4:11 PM on February 9, 2013 [9 favorites]


How do you know he hasn't already?
posted by blue_beetle at 4:17 PM on February 9, 2013 [4 favorites]


Most hollywood types wouldn't pass the Turing test, so consider this a fair exchange.
posted by clvrmnky at 4:17 PM on February 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Apparently, "one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever" is so convincingly human because it uses random pop culture references as a conversational crutch.

Well played, Cleverbot. Well played.
posted by chrominance at 4:26 PM on February 9, 2013 [5 favorites]


After seeing this, I'm convinced Michael Bay could use cleverbot to increase the quality of his movies.

No, his movies come from a different research paradigm: A.S. artificial stupidity. It's where the social and economic constraints on the people involved in producing a movie approach a turing complete set of rules whereupon the movie output approximates that of a chatbot hacked together with punch cards for a social machine no one really understands very well.
posted by ennui.bz at 4:28 PM on February 9, 2013


Is there a purpose to "chatterbots", beyond novelty?
posted by jepler at 4:37 PM on February 9, 2013


@jepler: Actually, yes. They can be interesting vectors for research into text analysis and generation. After all, at the high end, IBM's Watson (the Jeopardy-playing supercomputer) is essentially operating as a chatterbot, although (obviously) a more powerful and sophisticated one than Cleverbot.
posted by sonic meat machine at 5:17 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]


You can keep your Cleverbot as long as I can have my MEDIBOT.
posted by Perko at 5:43 PM on February 9, 2013


A romantic comedy where the script for one of the parts is made up by lines from Boyfriend Maker might actually work. (There is a version for Android now)

Some idle research led me to the list of chatterbots on wikipedia, from that to the Loebner Prize (which I'm sure has been posted about here before), and then on to the latest winner: Empathy Now - an app you can call your friend, a (optionally) for-pay chatterbot. The idea is kinda neat, but it does feel a bit depressing that there really might be a market for something like this.
posted by Baron Humbert von Gikkingen at 5:45 PM on February 9, 2013


I'm kind of sad that the Egmont Overture got dragged into this.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 6:26 PM on February 9, 2013


I thought the music worked well. The self seriousness of Beethoven sets a nice contrasting background against the sheer cleverbot absurdity.
posted by spiderskull at 8:23 PM on February 9, 2013 [2 favorites]


Is there a purpose to "chatterbots", beyond novelty?
Chatterbots are a contemporary offshoot of ELIZA which was used for virtual psychotherapy.

I'm convinced that most of the customer service "live chat" systems used in today's ecommerce sites are actually just chat bots using a system similar to ELIZA or chatterbot to provide soothing responses to common problems.
posted by deathpanels at 8:52 PM on February 9, 2013


chrominance: Apparently, "one of the most advanced artificial intelligences ever" is so convincingly human because it uses random pop culture references as a conversational crutch.

If you don't like it, you can bite its shiny metal ass!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:02 PM on February 9, 2013 [3 favorites]


Well, I've seen student films that make less sense, so good game.
posted by strixus at 6:49 AM on February 10, 2013


After I watched that, I visited Cleverbot and made it help me write fanfiction. It picked Portal, of all things, so it ended up involving sweet, sweet robot love. I think maybe next I'll try to get it to pick Twilight. That seems like fun (or torture).
posted by i feel possessed at 7:28 AM on February 10, 2013


People were never really supposed to use ELIZA as a therapist.

The "psychotherapist" angle was somewhere between a joke and a corner-cutting hack. Normally, the hard thing about writing a chatbot is giving it a personality and a store of real-world knowledge. But if you're allowed to keep turning the conversation back towards the human participant — say, by asking "Why does that question interest you?" or "What do you think?" instead of answering a question — then you can avoid a lot of that personality and world-knowledge stuff. Calling ELIZA a "therapist" was basically just an excuse to rely really heavily on that enough-about-me-let's-talk-about-you approach.
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 9:35 AM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Cleverbot is AWESOME.
posted by DarlingBri at 4:47 PM on February 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


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