Chatterbot

A chatter robot, chatterbot, chatbot, or chat bot is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods, primarily for engaging in small talk. The primary aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking that the program's output has been produced by a human (the Turing test). Programs playing this role are sometimes referred to as Artificial Conversational Entities, talk bots or chatterboxes. In addition, however, chatterbots are often integrated into dialog systems for various practical purposes such as online help, personalised service, or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simply scan for keywords within the input and pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a textual database.

The term "ChatterBot" was originally coined by Michael Mauldin (Creator of the first Verbot, Julia) in 1994 to describe these conversational programs.^[1]

Background

In 1950, Alan Turing published his famous article "Computing Machinery and Intelligence",^[2] which proposed what is now called the Turing test as a criterion of intelligence. This criterion depends on the ability of a computer program to impersonate a human in a real-time written conversation with a human judge, sufficiently well that the judge is unable to distinguish reliably—on the basis of the conversational content alone—between the program and a real human. The notoriety of Turing's proposed test stimulated great interest in Joseph Weizenbaum's program ELIZA, published in 1966, which seemed to be able to fool users into believing that they were conversing with a real human. However Weizenbaum himself did not claim that ELIZA was genuinely intelligent, and the Introduction to his paper presented it more as a debunking exercise:

[In] artificial intelligence ... machines are made to behave in wondrous ways, often sufficient to dazzle even the most experienced observer. But once a particular program is unmasked, once its inner workings are explained ... its magic crumbles away; it stands revealed as a mere collection of procedures ... The observer says to himself "I could have written that". With that thought he moves the program in question from the shelf marked "intelligent", to that reserved for curios ... The object of this paper is to cause just such a re-evaluation of the program about to be "explained". Few programs ever needed it more.^[3]

ELIZA's key method of operation (copied by chatbot designers ever since) involves the recognition of cue words or phrases in the input, and the output of corresponding pre-prepared or pre-programmed responses that can move the conversation forward in an apparently meaningful way (e.g. by responding to any input that contains the word 'MOTHER' with 'TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY').^[4] Thus an illusion of understanding is generated, even though the processing involved has been merely superficial. ELIZA showed that such an illusion is surprisingly easy to generate, because human judges are so ready to give the benefit of the doubt when conversational responses are capable of being interpreted as "intelligent". Thus the key technique here—which characterises a program as a chatbot rather than as a serious natural language processing system—is the production of responses that are sufficiently vague and non-specific that they can be understood as "intelligent" in a wide range of conversational contexts. The emphasis is typically on vagueness and unclarity, rather than any conveying of genuine information.

Interface designers have come to appreciate that humans' readiness to interpret computer output as genuinely conversational—even when it is actually based on rather simple pattern-matching—can be exploited for useful purposes. Most people prefer to engage with programs that are human-like, and this gives chatbot-style techniques a potentially useful role in interactive systems that need to elicit information from users, as long as that information is relatively straightforward and falls into predictable categories. Thus, for example, online help systems can usefully employ chatbot techniques to identify the area of help that users require, potentially providing a "friendlier" interface than a more formal search or menu system. This sort of usage holds the prospect of moving chatbot technology from Weizenbaum's "shelf ... reserved for curios" to that marked "genuinely useful computational methods".

ActiveBuddy was a company that created conversation-based interactive agents originally distributed via instant messaging platforms. Founded in 2000, the company was the brainchild of Robert Hoffer and Timothy Kay. The idea for interactive agents came from Hoffer’s vision to add functionality to increasingly popular instant messaging services. The original implementation took shape as a word-based adventure game but quickly grew to include a wide range of database applications including access to news, weather, stock information, movie times, yellow pages listings, and detailed sports data, as well as a variety of tools (calculators, translator, etc.). These various applications were bundled into a single entity and launched as SmarterChild in 2001. SmarterChild acted as a showcase for the quick data access and possibilities for fun conversation that the company planned to turn into customized, niche specific products.

The rapid success of SmarterChild, over 13 million users, led to targeted promotional products for Radiohead, Austin Powers, The Sporting News, and others. ActiveBuddy sought to strengthen its hold on the interactive agent market for the future by filing for, and receiving, a patent on their creation in 2002.The company also released the BuddyScript SDK, a free developer kit that allow programmers to design and launch their own interactive agents using ActiveBuddy’s proprietary scripting language, in 2002. The company subsequently changed its name from ActiveBuddy to Conversagent in 2003, and then again to Colloquis in 2006. Colloquis was later purchased by Microsoft in October of 2006.

Development

The classic historic early chatterbots are ELIZA (1966) and PARRY (1972).^[5][6][7][8] More recent notable programs include A.L.I.C.E., Jabberwacky and D.U.D.E (Agence Nationale de la Recherche and CNRS 2006). While ELIZA and PARRY were used exclusively to simulate typed conversation, many chatterbots now include functional features such as games and web searching abilities. In 1984, a book called The Policeman's Beard is Half Constructed was published, allegedly written by the chatbot Racter (though the program as released would not have been capable of doing so).^[9]

One pertinent field of AI research is natural language processing. Usually, weak AI fields employ specialized software or programming languages created specifically for the narrow function required. For example, A.L.I.C.E. utilises a programming language called AIML, which is specific to its function as a conversational agent, and has since been adopted by various other developers of, so called, Alicebots. Nevertheless, A.L.I.C.E. is still purely based on pattern matching techniques without any reasoning capabilities, the same technique ELIZA was using back in 1966. This is not strong AI, which would require sapience and logical reasoning abilities.

Jabberwacky learns new responses and context based on real-time user interactions, rather than being driven from a static database. Some more recent chatterbots also combine real-time learning with evolutionary algorithms that optimise their ability to communicate based on each conversation held, with one notable example being Kyle, winner of the 2009 Leodis AI Award.^[10] Still, there is currently no general purpose conversational artificial intelligence, and some software developers focus on the practical aspect, information retrieval.

Usage in dialog systems

Example of an automated online assistant providing customer service on a web page.

Chatterbots are often integrated into the dialog systems of, for example, automated online assistants, giving them the ability of, for example, small talking or engaging in casual conversations unrelated to the scopes of their primary expert systems.

Large companies such as Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Renault and Citroën are now using automated online assistants instead of call centres with humans to provide a first point of contact.

Malicious use

Malicious chatterbots are frequently used to fill chat rooms with spam and advertising, or to entice people into revealing personal information, such as bank account numbers. They are commonly found on Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger and other instant messaging protocols. There has also been a published report of a chatterbot used in a fake personal ad on a dating service's website.^[11]

Competitions

Chatterbot competitions focus on the Turing test or more specific goals. Two such annual contests are the Loebner Prize and The Chatterbox Challenge.^[12]

See also

• Cleverbot
• Dialog system
• Interactive online characters
• List of chatterbots
• Loebner prize
• Markov chain
• Turing test

Citations

1. ^ Mauldin 1994
2. ^ (Turing 1950)
3. ^ (Weizenbaum 1966, p. 36)
4. ^ (Weizenbaum 1966, pp. 44–5)
5. ^ GüzeldereFranchi 1995
6. ^ Computer History Museum 2006
7. ^ Sondheim 1997
8. ^ Network Working Group 1973—Transcript of a session between Parry and Eliza. (This is not the dialogue from the ICCC, which took place October 24–26, 1972, whereas this session is from September 18, 1972.)
9. ^ www.everything.com 13 November 1999
10. ^ [1]
11. ^ "From Russia With Love" (PDF). http://drrobertepstein.com/downloads/FROM_RUSSIA_WITH_LOVE-Epstein-Sci_Am_Mind-Oct-Nov2007.pdf. Retrieved 2007-12-09.  Psychologist and Scientific American: Mind contributing editor Robert Epstein reports how he was initially fooled by a chatterbot posing as an attractive girl in a personal ad he answered on a dating website. In the ad, the girl portrayed herself as being in Southern California and then soon revealed, in poor English, that she was actually in Russia. He became suspicious after a couple of months of email exchanges, sent her an email test of gibberish, and she still replied in general terms. The dating website is not named. Scientific American: Mind, October–November 2007, page 16–17, "From Russia With Love: How I got fooled (and somewhat humiliated) by a computer". Also available online.
12. ^ (German) Chatroboter simulieren Menschen

References

• Computer History Museum (2006), "Internet History—1970's", Exhibits, Computer History Museum, http://www.computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_70s.shtml, retrieved 2008-03-05 
• Güzeldere, Güven; Franchi, Stefano (1995-07-24), dialogues with colorful personalities of early ai, "Constructions of the Mind", Stanford Humanities Review, SEHR (Stanford University) 4 (2), http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/dialogues.html, retrieved 2008-03-05 
• Mauldin, Michael (1994), "ChatterBots, TinyMuds, and the Turing Test: Entering the Loebner Prize Competition", Proceedings of the Eleventh National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, AAAI Press, http://www.aaai.org/Library/AAAI/aaai94contents.php, retrieved 2008-03-05  (abstract)
• Network Working Group (1973), "RFC 439, PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR", Internet Engineering Task Force (Internet Society), http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc439, retrieved 2008-03-05 
• Sondheim, Alan J (1997), <nettime> Important Documents from the Early Internet (1972), nettime.org, http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9707/msg00059.html, retrieved 2008-03-05 
• Searle, John (1980), "Minds, Brains and Programs", Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (3): 417–457, doi:10.1017/S0140525X00005756, http://members.aol.com/NeoNoetics/MindsBrainsPrograms.html 
• Turing, Alan (1950), "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Mind 59: 433–60 
• Weizenbaum, Joseph (January 1966), "ELIZA—A Computer Program For the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man And Machine", Communications of the ACM 9 (1): 36–45, doi:10.1145/365153.365168 

External links

• Chatterbots at the Open Directory Project