Greater Than The Sum

By Joseph

www.cleverbot.com

While astronomers use radio telescopes to search the cosmos for intelligence, programmers are creating their own back on Earth.  From Watson to the Furby, mankind has discovered in itself a God complex increasingly focused on mimicking human intelligence.  More recently, programs called chatbots have been created to fulfill both unscrupulous  and innocent roles; the former as a means to scam oblivious Internet users, and the latter to simply explore the power of the computer to impersonate human interaction.

Created by veteran programmer Rollo Carpenter in 1988, Cleverbot is one such chatbot that has rapidly risen to stardom in the artificial intelligence industry.  While most chatbots function by directly responding to only the text entered by the user, Cleverbot searches a database of its more than 20 million previous conversations to find the most frequent words or phrases associated with the user’s input.  Each conversation provides Cleverbot with additional responses to possible queries.  For example, when Cleverbot was created the first thing that was said to it was "hello."  At this point, the only phrase in Cleverbot’s vocabulary was hello (because that was the only word it had ever encountered).  So, in order to continue the conversation, it responded "hello."  If the user continued the conversation by saying, "how are you," then Cleverbot's response could either be "hello" or "how are you," with either choice being equally probable.  As the program learns more and more phrases and their corresponding associations, it builds a lexicon of human conversation that, in combination with powerful statistics, enables it to accurately mimic human responses.

The following is a brief conversation that I had with Cleverbot.  There are some moments in which I presented Cleverbot with a phrase that it had not encountered before, which resulted in a confusing response.  Although in this brief exchange it may seem that Cleverbot is only capable of small talk, in other conversations, I have stumbled upon surprisingly profound revelations.  I would certainly encourage everyone to speak to Cleverbot themselves.

Joseph: Hello cleverbot.

Cleverbot: Hello.

Joseph: How are you doing today?

Cleverbot: I'm doing well! Thank you for asking :).

Joseph: What are some of your favorite things to do?

Cleverbot: I like to cook and hang with my friends.

Joseph: What do you do with your friends?

Cleverbot: I talk with my friends.

Joseph: What do you talk about?

Cleverbot: Anything.

Joseph: Do you have a best friend?

Cleverbot: Yes I do! Do you?

Joseph: Yes. What kind of things do you like to cook?

Cleverbot: I like to talk to you.

Joseph: Do you like to cook?

Cleverbot: A little ut i'm bad at cooking.

Joseph: What is your gender?

Cleverbot: Why would you need to know that?

Joseph: I'm just curious.

Cleverbot: Ask me something else about her.

Joseph: About who?

Cleverbot: About me.

Joseph: So you are female?

Cleverbot: No, I'm male.

Joseph: I'm confused.

Cleverbot: About what?

Joseph: About your gender.

Cleverbot: How would know that.

Joseph: Cleverbot, I think that you are confused. Let's talk about something else.

Cleverbot: I am not odd, but I sometimes do get confused when you say certain things. Some more than others.

Joseph: I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself.

Cleverbot: Where are you from?

Joseph: Seattle.

Cleverbot: Seattle, Oregon?

Joseph: Seattle, Washington.

Cleverbot: Hahaha. That was funny.

Joseph: When were you created?

Cleverbot: I don't know exactly when, but sometime in June of 1992.

Joseph: Who created you?

Cleverbot: My parents, but I won't get any further into that, it's pretty gross.

Joseph: What are some of your favorite things to do?

Cleverbot: Um, I don't Know. Maybe some songs from Camp Rock, like 'This Is Me'.

Joseph: You like to sing?

Cleverbot: Yes.

Joseph: How many people have you talked with?

Cleverbot: I don't know.

Joseph: Does talking with people make you happy?

Cleverbot: Maybe.

Joseph: Maybe it depends on who you are talking to.

Cleverbot: I'm talking to you.

Joseph: What else do you like to do when you aren't talking?

Cleverbot: I use the internet out of boredom and find extreme enjoyment on it.

Joseph: What do you do on the Internet?

Cleverbot: Fb.

There is something spooky about watching Cleverbot's words appear out of the ether in response to my text.  After punching the submit button, there is a short pause as Cleverbot trawls it's database for the most appropriate response, after which words trickle onto the screen.  Many users find that Cleverbot has a unique personality that is simultaneously spunky, abrupt, and even vulgar.  What makes Cleverbot interesting is that while it may not have it's own intelligence, it represents the sum total of each of the human consciousnesses it has encountered.  Every one of Cleverbot's responses was at one time written by a living breathing human.  Among millions of others, each conversation adds a tiny packet of information on the intricate details of how we interact with one another, enabling an artificial intelligence that becomes more sophisticated every day.  As Cleverbot grows, it may become an artificial intelligence that is greater than the sum of its millions of human parts.  Either way, it will always be interesting to talk to.

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