Objectives

Unit Objectives
Upon completion of this Unit, you will be able to:


 * Explain what a 'bot' is, and name several types of bots.
 * Explain what a chatbot is, and show where several examples are located on the internet.
 * Describe, from your own point of view, what it's like to chat with a chatbot, and how that differs from chatting with a human being.
 * Express your opinion of the usefulness or validity of the Turing Test of whether or not a computer can think.
 * Observe the responses that a chatbot makes to a user's input, and characterize them according to criteria that you propose. For example, does the bot show that it can remember what the user says? Does the bot always give the same response for the same user input? And so on.
 * Explain how Artificial Intelligence Markup Language (AIML) is used to encode a bot's personality. Create an initial set of working AIML rules from a text-based interview (questions and answers), using an online utility. Use a spreadsheet-style editor to edit a bot's personality in AIML.
 * Upload your AIML file to a web-based bot-host and interact with your bot.
 * Analyze several different bots which emulate the same personality, in order to determine which best or most successfully emulates the personality chosen. Be sure to justify your answer using specific examples of the bot's chatter.
 * Create a chatbot emulation of some celebrity of your choice.

Go on to the first Lab.