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Try my updated Javascript chatbot

13 June 2014

There was a story in the news this week about a program that had apparently passed the Turing Test for artificial intelligence. This test basically says that if a person can't tell whether they are chatting to a real person or a piece of software, the software exhibits artificial intelligence. Having heard John Humphrys on Radio 4 chatting to the program, I have to say I wasn't convinced the program would have convinced me it was a human, even a 13-year old one.

Anyway, this inspired me to do an update on my own Javascript chatbot, Virtual Sean, which I wrote in Javascript in 2000. It uses a few different methods to decide what to say: first, it checks for words it recognises and then replies with a suitable response if it finds a match. For some words, it can recommend web pages too, and ask you if you want to see them. If you type in 'yes', it takes you there. When it doesn't recognise what you've said, it picks a random phrase and uses that. The random phrases don't repeat (although the keyword-triggered ones do), because the random phrases are swapped with what you type in.

If you work co-operatively with the program, you can create a fun simulation of an intelligent conversation, although this is clearly no contender for passing the Turing Test.

I've updated the program to include some new vocabulary and to tweak the priority of some of the other words it knows. I'd be interested to know what other topics and words you use that aren't recognised. I've tried to predict the most obvious ones, but I'm sure I've missed plenty. Chat to Virtual Sean here.

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