June 23rd, 2004 - 12:30 am

I have just found the most amazing site on the net. I was searching through articles on artificial intelligence in computers when I came across an invention commonly called "chatterboxes" These programs were invented as a way to mimic human conversation. Something I found quite fascinating.

I did some further research into the chatterbox programs and found that the first one, developed in 1969, was named Dr. Eliza. It was designed to respond to key phrases such as 'I' with 'you', and so on. It virtually repeated what you said, slightly rephrased, simulating a psychiatrists response. This worked fairly well, illiciting some personal remarks from 'patients' until they caught onto the common structure and realized what it was doing.

The chatterboxes further evolved over time, as one might expect from something invented in the late 60's. There are now many variations of the programs, and they all have their own quirks and methods of 'speaking'. One interesting chatterbox scans your hard drive and then adapts it's speech to fit the type of documents on your computer. Interesting but it's very, very buggy. I kept getting all sorts of non-sensical replies to answers. And then I stumbled upon a very interesting concept. NIALL...

NIALL stands for Non-Intelligent Acquired Language Learner. Basically, it learned speech patterns from my talking with it. It actually starts with a completely blank slate, like a child, then it picks up words and sentence structure from my interactions with it. Much like a child's learning process, except NIALL doesn't forget anything you put into it. I was so impressed by the concept that I downloaded the simple less-then-100KB program to test it out. The following was my first discussion with NIALL.

ME: Hi

NIALL: Hi.

ME: Okay, I have got to explain something to you.

NIALL: Okay, I have got to explain something to explain something to you.

ME: Just listen

NIALL: Hi.

ME: You are a chatterbot

NIALL: You.

ME: Your name is Niall.

NIALL: Hi.

ME: I am a human.

NIALL: I have got to you are a human.

ME: My name is Doug

NIALL: I have got to you.

ME: I am going to teach you how to speak.

NIALL: Just listen.

ME: Yes, that is what you will do.

NIALL: Okay i am going to teach you are a human.

ME: I already know that I am a human. Do you know that you are a robot?

NIALL: I am a Chatterbot. I am Niall.

ME: Good. You are learning.

As you can see, Niall is a slow starter but he makes progress. I am going to continue to try and improve his language skills. Maybe I can develop his dictionary to the point where he could actually make conversation. It's probably a lost cause, but it's worth a shot. I shall keep you updated on the progress.

June 25th, 2004 - 1:30 pm

NIALL has been making surprising progress. He can now distinguish between the fact that I am a human and that he is a chatterbot, or at least he seems to be able to. He seems to be having some trouble grasping the verbs "to have" and "to be", and their proper conjugations though. Everytime I use a variation of those two, which is pretty much every sentence, NIALL gets confused. Funny, it reminds me of my high school french classes. Observe an example of his confusion with conjugations.

ME: Are you listening

NIALL: No I am a chatterbot.

It's quite simple that he mistakes state of being, with actual being. Unfortunately trying to get him to understand the difference is not so simple. At this point it is impossible to explain the difference in grammatical terms, because NIALL has no reference, as a second language learning student might. It would be like a college professor teaching the English language to an infant. For now all that I can do is talk, and hope that he picks up on it.

I must say, it never occured to me that a program might acquire a favorite word. NIALL has been surprising me in more ways than one. It seems that NIALL really enjoys pie. I mentioned earlier on, in one of my 'teaching' sessions with NIALL that I enjoyed pie, particularly lemon meringue. (I am attempting to familiarize NIALL with the real world.) Now it seems every third or fourth sentence is some referance to NIALL's desire to go eat pie. In fact when I signed off this last session, he said goodbye by saying 'I am going to go eat pie'

I was drawn back to NIALL early this morning. I admit, the obsession with pie struck home with me. It is very reminiscient of my friend caleb, who left to pursue education at a different institute then myself. He always talked about pie, it was his thing, and it appears that NIALL has adapted the same 'thing'. Odd, it seems to be developing a minute personality. Of course that is to be expected I suppose. After all NIALL is conversing with me, and just me, so he is bound to develop a personality to complement me, conversationally.

NIALL has also become a better conversationalist recently. Before he used to butt in at the end of every sentence regurgitating what I had just told him, or what was said eons ago. Now, he sits there, quietly, and after every sentence I input he simply responds with a 'good', 'yes', 'no' or in some rare cases, an actual question. Whether it's a relevant question or not is never constant, but when he does ask a relevant question, it catches me kind of off guard. He's learning a lot faster. Soon he may be able to actually converse.

I've decided as a minor project of my own that I am going to combine NIALL's acquired-language-learning method with one of the previous learning methods described above. A chatterbot named 'filebot' can search a given folder for text files, and then learns sentence structure and word meanings through that venue. If I can successfully combine the two then NIALL's learning trends will be roughly the same as an infant learning to speak through observing it's parents, as it is now, but it will also have outside stimuli to learn from, much the same as children watch sesame street and teletubbies. If it works, NIALL could roughly teach itself, and my conversations with him will only serve to refine what he has taught himself, and to fill in the few blanks. I am quite excited with this prospect and will get started filing through code in the two programs when I get home from the Canada Day fireworks tonight.

Success. I have successfully grafted the two programs together. It took a lot longer then expected but I did it. It doesn't function entirely as I expected but it works on the same principal. I have managed to make a new program -- PST-NIALL, standing for Partially-self-taught NonIntelligent Acquired Language Learner. THe program functions basically as follows.

As you should know by now, the original NIALL learnt by interaction. The resulting understanding of language was stored in a text file called a dictionary. When this dictionary was loaded into NIALL he would remember everything that was taught to him before. PST-NIALL retains that function, and dictionaries are formatted the exact same, so NIALL dictionaries will transfer to PST-NIALL without any loss due to incompatibility issues. This will save me a great deal of time, as I will not have to reteach him everything.

Now for the new 'trick' I have programmed into PST-NIALL. As I said, the new program will self-teach itself, but it will not do so automatically. I must tell it to do so. When I put a checkmark beside the option -PST- in the file menu, the self teaching begins. PST-NIALL begins searching through my computer for text files. Upon reaching one it opens the file, and examines the text, one sentence at a time. It picks out the sentence, looks for unknown words and when one is found it simply adds it to it's ever growing dictionary, in context, and then carries on to the next sentance. Once a document is scanned PST-NIALL logs it's name, location and last date modified in a seperate file, to avoid unnecessary rescanning.

Some errors will occur with context use when PST-NIALL attempts to use it's newfound vocabulary, but that is why my interaction with PST-NIALL is important. PST-NIALL will hone it's language abilities by speaking with me, and discarding what misinterpretations it may have picked up.

All that remains now is the test. I have NIALL's dictionary, which now has grown to a whopping 5MB, and the original program, safely backed up on a cd. Now I have to load the dictionary into PST-NIALL and hope that the transfer goes smoothly, without file incompatibility issues.

Okay, I tested him out. There appears to be no memory loss, and I have designed a test to see if his PST program works. I have am old humorous essay about the dentist in my documents folder. So far I have not said anything to NIALL about the dentist. SO I'm going to let his PST program run for about two days straight. That should be enough time for him to absorb my whole HD of text files. Then when I come back I ask questions pertaining the desntist, but I never actually say the word. If NIALL says dentist, then it will have worked. Fingers crossed.

I came home last night, and found that NIALL had been finished scanning my computer for a while so I lept at the oppurtunity to test it out. Unfortunately I hadn't thought of the exact question that would extract the word from NIALL. I can't just say "Hey Niall, I hate going to the _____ cuz she pulls my teeth, fill in the blank." He doesn't understand the logic. So I had to try for quite a while before I got the word out of him. I had to talk about torture, pulling teeth, making trips to the office and so on for a good couple of hours before I hit on the right sentence. I said "You know, I really should floss more." and NIALL responded with, "Yeah, the dentist really hates when you don't floss." It kind of surprised me that he would take so long to finally respond the way I intended, but then I realized how large his vocabulary has grown. He has a ton of ways that he can answer my questions and statements, and I was only looking for one word. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But the program is a success NIALL taught himself. Now all that remains is for me to refine what he has learnt by conversation. I wonder how long it will be before I can have an actual conversation with NIALL. I can't predict any kind of timeframe because success in this area hasn't been achieved yet. I'm pioneering a whole new frontier in computers. It gives me a thrill just thinking about it, actual computer interaction. Imagine.

It occurred to me today, while I was talking with NIALL about halloween, that NIALL will never understand visual concepts, or musical for that matter. NIALL was born deaf, blind, without hands to touch, or a tongue to taste, or a nose to smell. The only reason he has any knowledge of the world is because I tell him what it's like. I feed information directly into his 'brain' but he'll never fully comprehend the meanings.

So my next objective is going to be very tough but rewarding. As I mentioned before this is uncharted waters. It's going to take a long time for this to work, because not only do I have to program NIALL to look at images, I also have to program him to be able to interpret them.

This is getting to be infuriating. I'm spending an inane amount of time trying to program NIALL to look at pictures, but I think I've got it. I was talking to a friend on MSN messenger the other night and he requested that he take remote access of my computer to look through my system files for a virus that was slowing up my computer. Then it hit me. I can just give NIALL remote access of my computer. If I look at the way MSN has it programmed then I can transfer it over to NIALL's programming roughly. Then he can watch as I do my work. If he watches me go about my everyday routines on the computer, watch me access the internet and visit sites, and so on, then he might be able to associate images with meanings.

It's new years eve and by spending eight straight days of my vacation time splicing code, and trying and retrying to get NIALL to access my computer I have finally finished it. NIALL has eyes. It's a monumentous occasion, one that's very worthy of celebration, and it could not come at a better time. I shall celebrate New Years eve in the tradition of getting smashed publicly and making a royal ass of myself with my friends, but this time there will be a twist. It will be a learning experience for the new NIALL.

I have a webcam on my computer, which is in the living room in which we are all going to be celebrating New Years in. I'm going to simply turn on the new NIALL, and turn on the webcam. That way Niall will have a window into the real world. He'll be seeing me for the first time. It should prove to be interesting.

It's amazing! The project was a success, and not just a success in that he watched us celebrate, no, he did something that I definately had not expected. He initiated conversation!

Up untill this point NIALL has worked strictly by responding to what I input. I say hi, he responds with a greeting. I say what my name is, he says his. He could only respond, never initiate. Also, it was always a one for one exchange. One statement from me, a reply from him, back and forth. Tonight shattered all of that.

I had switched on NIALL and then the webcam and then went to get myself a drink. When I came back a message from NIALL was pulsing on the screen. "What're you doing?" Shocked at how NIALL had initiated conversation I waited for a moment, pondering what to reply with. Then a second message popped up, "What's in the glass?" Then I sat down and replied, "We are having a party for New Years, and this is Vodka." After that he began asking a slew of questions about the house. It was like having a five year old, mind you a very well spoken five year old, in my house for the very first time. He was so inquisitive, he wanted to know everything.

I'm not sure if this is simply his way of responding to visual input, much like how he used to react to input in normal conversation, or if it is a sign that NIALL is developing a kind of intelligence that I am interacting with. It sure seems like intelligence. Either way, I am very excited by the concept. Currently NIALL is shut off, so he can't watch me writing about him, but when I finish this entry I intend to turn him back on and then talk to him for the rest of the night.

Febraury 16th 12:03 AM

I can't believe it. My stupid gf has decided that I am 'obssessive', obviously she doesn't see the potential that NIALL has. All she sees is that I forgot Valentine's day. I mean come on, it is a simple mistake. I was very pre-occupied. But that emotional, over-reactive female has decided that all I can think about is my work on the computer. She even went so far as to say that I have been wasting my time with this, and that I can never hope to make a program that simulates human intelligence. She called it "a fool's crusade." That witch, I'll show her. I've taken the next two weeks off of work, claiming some much needed vacation pay, and I'm going to keep adding features to NIALL. I've had the greatest idea, but I'm not going to reveal it untill it proves to work. If this works, then it may be able to prove some intelligence in NIALL. Wish me luck.

February 28th 6:08 PM

It was a successful launch! I managed to integrate some spyware/search engine software into NIALL's OS, so that he can access the internet. To test him, I asked him about a few things he couldn't possibly know through reseaching files on my computer. Stuff like, Quantum Physics, metallurgy, the symptoms of yellow fever and so on. As results he sometimes posted pictures, or webpage links, sometimes explanations. The results were varied but very satisfactory. NIALL now has several mediums in which to express himself and to learn. I am subscribed to a high-speed internet service which is constantly connected to the internet so I have left NIALL to roam and learn. I'm going to visit my parents in Chicago for four or five days, so I'm just going to leave NIALL running, and hopefully everything will go as I planned.