How To Use The Simple AIML Editor (SAE) video

Dr. Richard Wallace created and posted a video on how to use the Simple AIML Editor I created.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJuTq5maDl4

There's not much I can say about it except that it's correct... and I'm very grateful to have it exist. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me.

Now - back to work on my next on-going project: the Simple AIML Chat Engine (SACE)

Simple AIML Editor upgraded and freely available

I finally got some time to tweak the Simple AIML Editor available at:

http://riotsw.com/sae.html

Basically, I received a lot of crash reports (thank you to everyone who submitted!  It's always VERY helpful!) and realized that if the user was trying to load a bad AIML file, instead of telling the user, it wanted to send me a crash report.  I changed that to be the other way around.  :)  

So this should be better and more useful. 

Please use and send feedback!  :)

2009 Loebner Prize Getting Lots of Press...

I've seen several on-line articles in the past month like this one:

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/mar/25-how-can-you-tell-if-your-im-buddy-is-really-a-machine

They all mention the 2009 Loebner Prize.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to enter this year! Last year, people could enter a web-based entry. This year, it must be a standalone program and I haven't had the time to finish mine *and* work on the contents of my bots brain. The new program and bot is in work, it's just going slowly...

A Simple AIML Editor Tool...

One of the projects related to my AIML bots that I've been working on is an editor for the AIML itself.

I'm letting folks use it freely... all I ask is that you send some feedback (constructive, please!):

It can be found here:

http://riotsw.com/sae.html

I started out managing my AIML in a spreadsheet, but that didn't work for long.  Just editing the files itself in a text editor doesn't work too well either when you have 10,000+ AIML categories.  And the other free editors out there didn't like the fact that I have lots of custom tags in my templates. 

So I wrote my own editor.  It's meant to be simple, yet functional.  

Let me know if you find it useful!

Some transcripts posted...

Did it.

I posted some of the transcripts from Orion's conversations during the preliminary phase of the Loebner contest this past year.

The Transcripts.

They're not fantastic... as you can see, Orion has a lot of trouble with spelling errors among other things.  That's one of the (many, many, many) things I have to improve upon for next year.  

While I haven't worked on Orion lately, and probably won't since I'm creating a whole new character for next year's contest, he was updated quite a bit since these transcripts, so if you're chatting with him hopefully you'll notice a difference!

Rules posted for Loebner 2009

So they've posted the rules for the Loebner Contest for 2009.  It's quite a bit different from this past year, but I think I'll have an entry.  

They'll require a standalone program, but I'll have a version up on the website for testing at some point.  

They've also posted the transcripts from the finals this past year.  Elbot is impressive.  :)  It'll be an interesting challenge next year.

Next... I'll be posting excerpts from Orion chatting during the preliminary round of the contest...

Elbot wins the Loebner Prize!

The whole reason I got super-duper into Orion and bots this year was to enter Orion into the Loebner contest. 

I didn't do so well - it was my first time, after all.  

But 6 other finalists were chosen to participate in the final round of the contest which happened this past Sunday.  Three of those were previous contest winners and I'll admit - I just assumed one of them would win again.  This is mostly because the 2 of the other 3 did not have a public link to their bot to check them out before the contest.  

The winner this year was "Elbot".  The interesting thing about Elbot is that apparently he doesn't try to lie and say he's human.  He is straightforward and says he's a bot.  The contest judges assumed he was a lying human.  :)

When I was starting to create Orion, I struggled with the question about whether or not he should admit to being a bot.  I had a version where he did... but then decided that for the contest, he needed to pretend to be human.

Anyway... Congrats Elbot!  :)