h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"I'm not really, I'm just trying to get somewhere.
HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN NOT REALLY?
You're even dumber than I remembered.
WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I AM EVEN DUMBER THAN YOU REMEMBERED?"



"WHY DO YOU MENTION COMPUTERS?
That is what we were discussing.
THAT IS WHAT WE WAS DISCUSSING.
No, WERE discussing. That is grammar. "



"CAN YOU DESCRIBE HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET SOME DINNER?
Fully cooked on a plate. "

So which is worse, ELIZA or Cleverbot?
At least Cleverbot doesn't charge you $200 a conversation - even worse than calling a mobile.

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Hmm - I think, in spite of Cleverbot's 'advances' in technology, where zhe 'learns' by including user replies in hir database of responses, both ELIZA and Cleverbot are equally 'good' at making completely random responses!

Cleverbot has more ability to attempt to engage in the conversation, though, whereas ELIZA sometimes tries, but mostly just reflects the question back, which isn't the most engaging...

I guess $200 is quite cheap for an analyst these days, so we can't complain too much...

ELIZA doesn't actually specify it is US Dollars, but I do worry that I've got a huge bill hanging over my head...

You're right, ELIZA just does pattern-recognition. It looks to see if the sentence contains a number of key words such as 'Mother', 'Computer' etc or begins with 'Yes' and if so will use one of its pre-programmed stock responses, otherwise will tend to reply back what you wrote. It looks like Cleverbot attempts to converse rather than parrot, but not always successfully.

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In other words, this is how far they've got in 40 years?

This is an insult to parrots - some African greys do better than that.

Has a chatbot held a TED Talk yet?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAp6X0zZfx0