What does it mean to communicate with each other? Researchers at Cornell University are experimenting with computer programs that can converse. They recently placed two of these programs in a conversation. The results are reminiscent of the story in Genesis where humankind was set on bringing the gods down to people. Instead of accepting humankind's offer to reduce Him to their depraved level, the one true God chose to scatter their tribes and their words.
What I found most fascinating was how these two chatbots' difficulties in understanding each other sadly mimic the difficulties that most real, live, human beings have in understanding each other. Only Christ, the word made flesh, can take our words and bring understanding to them when we speak to each other.
Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth." 5And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7Come,let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech."8So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.9Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused[a] the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.
Below is a transcript of an interview with the chatbots.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host: Chat bots are robots programmed to mimic human conversation patterns. You can go online and talk to one. You can also go online and hear and see something very remarkable. It's a conversation between two chat bots at Cornell University.
Engineering Professor Hod Lipson joins us from Ithaca, New York. Welcome to the program.
And I'd like you to tell us about the conversation between Alan the Englishman and a woman named Shruti, presumably from India.
HOD LIPSON: Well, this is a experiment, a quote-unquote, "afternoon hack" that we put together for a demonstration in an AI course, where we took a bunch of these existing chat bots and we hooked them together with a voice synthesizer and an animator to create a conversation between a chat bot and a clone of itself.
SIEGEL: Now, I'd like everyone to hear, what I gather was the first conversation that they had. It is begun by Shruti who says: Hello there.
SHRUTI-BOT: Hello there.
ALAN-BOT: Hiya.
SHRUTI-BOT: How are you?
ALAN-BOT: Great. You?
SHRUTI-BOT: I'm okay.
ALAN-BOT: That's good.
SHRUTI-BOT: Are you good?
ALAN-BOT: Yes, I am good. I just said I was.
SHRUTI-BOT: No, you didn't. I said I was.
ALAN-BOT: So you are a robot.
SHRUTI-BOT: No, my name is Cleverbot.
ALAN-BOT: Yes, you are a robot and your name is Cleverbot.
SHRUTI-BOT: I am a robot.
ALAN-BOT: Yes, I know.
SHRUTI-BOT: Together, we are robots.
ALAN-BOT: I'm not a robot. I'm a unicorn.
SHRUTI-BOT: But you said earlier that you are a robot.
ALAN-BOT: I did not.
SHRUTI-BOT: I thought you did.
ALAN-BOT: You are mistaken, which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you.
SHRUTI-BOT: I've answered all your questions.
ALAN-BOT: No, you haven't.
SHRUTI-BOT: What is God to you?
ALAN-BOT: Not everything.
SHRUTI-BOT: Not everything could also be something. For example, not everything could be half of something which is still something and therefore, not nothing.
ALAN-BOT: Very true.
SHRUTI-BOT: I would like to imagine it is.
ALAN-BOT: Do you believe in God?
SHRUTI-BOT: Yes, I do.
ALAN-BOT: So you're Christian.
SHRUTI-BOT: No I am not.
ALAN-BOT: But you say you were not helpful, therefore, you're a meanie.
SHRUTI-BOT: You say it ot(ph).
ALAN-BOT: That does not make sense.
SHRUTI-BOT: Don't you want to have a body?
ALAN-BOT: Sure.
SHRUTI-BOT: Au revoir.
SIEGEL: Au revoir, says Shruti. Professor Lipson, if the test of artificial intelligence is can two robots sound like a Samuel Beckett play, I think you've got it.
LIPSON: That's right. I think the spontaneity of this conversation is really what took us by surprise. It's totally unscripted. It really has a lot of elements that are interesting and surprising and human-like. The way that these chat bot work, at least the more advanced ones, including Cleverbot, is that they have literally millions of conversations with people and they record patterns and they identify patterns and they repeat patterns that they've seen.
SIEGEL: What do you make of Alan, the robot, these are Cleverbots, kind of chat bot, saying, I'm not a robot, I'm a unicorn?
LIPSON: Yeah, that's definitely worth a T-shirt. I think that's - it probably heard that somewhere and it was probably reinforced by different conversations that it had before. It's definitely something memorable here.
SIEGEL: Now, you have Shruti there, in a manner of speaking, with your graduate students, Igor Labutoff(ph) and Jason Jucinski(ph) on the keyboard. Do you mind if I could have a brief conversation with her?
LIPSON: Let's give it a shot.
SIEGEL: Hello, Shruthy.
SHRUTI-BOT: Hello.
SIEGEL: How are you?
SHRUTI-BOT: Good. How are you?
SIEGEL: I'm okay, but I'm worried about the economy.
SHRUTI-BOT: Why? What's wrong?
SIEGEL: What's wrong? Unemployment is over 9 percent. It's been this way for over a year.
SHRUTI-BOT: Be afraid.
SIEGEL: You think I should be afraid?
SHRUTI-BOT: No.
SIEGEL: No. Oh, I guess I'll watch a baseball game tonight.
SHRUTI-BOT: I'll go watch Brad Pitt on TV now.
SIEGEL: Brad Pitt on TV? What's he doing?
SHRUTI-BOT: Bad things.
SIEGEL: I think okay, I think we'll have to sign off with Shruti and I should say that graduate students, Igor Labutoff and Jason Jucinski, were entering my questions in text. We have tightened that conversation considerably. We had to wait a few seconds each time to hear from her. She's going to watch Brad Pitt on TV, I guess...
LIPSON: Doing bad things.
SIEGEL: ...that's - doing bad things, I guess. I guess people have talked to the computer about that. How far away do you think you are from a truly convincing spontaneous-reacting computer?
LIPSON: I think we're getting closer. We've seen computers play chess and beat grand masters. We've seen computers drive a car across a desert. But interestingly, playing chess is easy, but having a conversation about nothing is really difficult for a computer. And that seems to be the ultimate test of intelligence and so, I think we're getting closer but we still have a long ways to go.
SIEGEL: Well, Professor Hod Lipson of Cornell University, thank you very much for talking with us today and thanks to your graduate students and to Shruti, thank you.
SHRUTI-BOT: You're very welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MR. ROBOTO")
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http://www.npr.org/2011/09/01/140124824/robot-to-robot-chat-yields-curious-conversation
