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Comment by bluekeybox | Hacker News Reader

Back in the day, I used to think that what happens inside our brains is fundamentally different from what happens inside a computer. I no longer hold that opinion, partly because of my finding out that the same thing that makes chat bots appear "bot-like" -- namely, inability to hold deep meaningful conversations beyond cheesy, trite retorts filled with non-specific trivia -- is also what annoys me most when trying to converse with a particular type of people. Perfect illustration:

    jabberwacky ==> WHat will happen with the oil spill in the gulf of mexico?
    splotchy ==> tacos anyone!

I am pretty sure that fiction writers are going to have a blast one day (or already are having) sampling material from chat bots.

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I am pretty sure that fiction writers are going to have a blast one day (or already are having) sampling material from chat bots.

I can't find a reference on-line, but this reminds me of my earliest exposure to an implementation of Eliza. It was written in BASIC in some 8-bit magazine back in the 80s. The article mentioned the history of chatbots and one bit was about a program named, I think, RACTOR, that was some kind of Markov chainer that was used to write fiction novels.

That was Racter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter).

"It" even wrote a book called "The Policeman's Beard Is Half Constructed". Was a fun read at its time. (http://www.ubu.com/historical/racter/index.html)

That's awesome. Here's an excerpt

More than iron, more than lead, more than gold I need electricity.

I need it more than I need lamb or pork or lettuce or cucumber.

I need it for my dreams.

here's another:

I gave the man a coat. I gave the woman a brassiere.

I gave myself an electric current. We all were

happy and full of delight. Take the coat from the

man and remove the brassiere from the woman and take

the electric current from me and we will be sad

and full of anguish.

That's been Roger Schank's guiding assumption to some extent: not that we really need to make AI "smarter", but that we just need to better understand the ways in which humans are fairly mechanical, or at least that "normal" human activity in most contexts is.

Hence he proposed moving away from more complex models of rationality, like logical inference or statistical decision-theory, and towards simpler ideas like frames of reference, dependencies between concepts, and behavioral scripts--- in his view, closer to what humans actually do.

We need to turing-test people like that! But seriously, I've never encountered people who can really go that far off-topic. I'm sure it was an exaggeration, but if it was enough to change your mind about how our brains work...

mexico to tacos, right?

"We need to turing-test people like that!"

Exactly. Someone once said during the AI research heyday (Minsky?) that research in artificial intelligence should be more correctly renamed to research in natural stupidity. While an exaggeration, I think he had a point.

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