‘AI Bush’ chatbot uses advanced natural-language programming

December 14, 2003 | Source: KurzweilAI

AI Bush, “an interactive Robot President,” is an experimental natural-language program and game from EllaZ Systems.

Announced today, it is based on the program “Ella,” which won the worldwide Loebner Prize Contest in 2002 as the “most human computer.”

AI Bush games include the strategy game “Reelect Bush?” You are a close advisor, helping him make decisions. The President’s expressions, voice clips, and tracking polls tell you how things are going.

A collection of classic books on philosophy, history, adventure, drama, literature also helps, along with thousands of Convuns (conversational units) that include images, trivia, jokes, poems, anecdotes, limericks, fables, quotes, maxims, and tongue-twisters. It can use XML web services to retrieve changing information on weather, stock prices, and currency exchange rates, along with the CIA World Factbook 2003.

“It serves as a good set of examples for the current state of the art for chat bots,” co-developer Robby Garner told KurzweilAI.net. Garner won the Loebner Prize Contest (based on the Turing Test) in 1998 and 1999. Co-developer Kevin Copple won it in 2002.

“It has examples of natural language control structures, queries, database usage, and a large number of public-domain books. Conversationally, it is on a par with other systems that have competed and applied for the Loebner Prize Contest, and we will continue to try and find ways to build intelligence incrementally.”

The program includes the WordNet lexical database, which gives AI Bush a sizeable vocabulary of 99,000 unique definitions and 120,000 words and small-word groups.

“There are other bots that are perhaps more educational for those wishing to build chat bots, Alice and JFred for instance. However, the trivia game in Reelect Bush is educational on a broader level, and I must confess, is quite fun and lightly humorous to play. The music is really good too.”

Garner doubles on vocals and synth.