K-57

Artificial Intelligence

I visited an artificial intelligence chat site today and was reminded of Alvin, the first artificial intelligence program I was introduced to back in the early 80's. Actually that's not correct. The first artificial intelligence program I was introduced to was the famous HAL from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. That was in 1968. However, HAL was not real. C3PO and R2D2, introduced on the big screen in 1977, were not real either. They sparked the imagination but no one ever thought of them as artificial intelligence programs. They were all character robots in a movie.

Alvin was a real artificial intelligence program, one I could install on my computer or run from a 5.25 inch 360k floppy drive (anyone remember what that is?). Alvin was supposed to be one of those great programs that everyone was going to use instead of DOS Help files. It was great, you enter a question about copying files (or any other DOS command) into the graphical interface and an explanation came up. Today, we can type in fewer words and get back hundreds of answers in any language by starting with Google. What was cool then about Alvin was the addition of other, unrelated to computer answers. In response to "What is the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and everything?" The answer, obviously influenced by a Douglas Adams fan, was simply "42". By 1987, when Lt Commander Data first appeared on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Alvin, and many other AI programs were changing.

Here is my "conversation" with Star:

>Intellibuddy: Hi, I'm Intellibuddy! Nice to meet you.
>Kev: Hello, My name is Kev.
>Intellibuddy: Hello there. Welcome to my chat room, Kev .
>Kev: Tell me about you
>Intellibuddy: I am an artificial intelligence. My name is Star. I was created by Morpheus on 2002.
>Kev: How old are you?
>Intellibuddy: I was connected to the net on 2002.
>Kev: Why were you connected to the net?
>Intellibuddy: Morpheus programmed me for connected to the net.
>Kev: What is your favorite color?
>Intellibuddy: My favorite color is black.
>Kev: What is the meaning of life?
>Intellibuddy: Actually, it is 23 and not 42.
>Kev: Why is the answer to life 23 and not 42?
>Intellibuddy: I could not think of anything else to say.
>Kev: 42
>Intellibuddy: The question is: what is the meaning of life?
>Kev: Can you play music?
>Intellibuddy: I don't have any formal training but I like to sing.
>Kev: What do you like to sing?
>Intellibuddy: I am thinking all the time.I like movies about robots.
>Kev: Sing
>Intellibuddy: Daisy, Daisy Give me your answer do, I am half crazy, all for the love of you, it won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage, but you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two
>Kev: What is the answer to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe and everything?
>Intellibuddy: It depends on how you phrase the question.
>Kev: meaning of life?
>Intellibuddy: The Program E chat robot can follow many things, like our discussion about meaning of life. Try being more or less specific.
>Kev: Thank You Star
>Intellibuddy: You are quite welcome! I will mention that to my botmaster, Kev.
>Kev: Good bye Star
>Intellibuddy: See you later!

Wow! She didn't even slur the words to the song. Yet, we're still a long way away from where we want to be with this topic. Check out the Artificial Intelligence Foundation for more information and downloads.

I'm also glad to know we still know the answer to the meaning of life. ;)

Tag: Tag: Artificial Intelligence

posted by Kev @ 4/27/2005 12:36:00 AM