Friday, March 18, 2011

WTF Cleverbot?



My partner plays World of Warcraft. We were talking about the different bots people use in the game, and how sophisticated some of them are. That made me think of Cleverbot, the website where you can have a conversation with an artificial intelligence program. So I went over there.

I started by asking, "Do you play WOW?"

It replied, "No, I'm a girl."

There are girls who play WOW.

Are you a boy?

No.

You are a boy.

What makes you think that?

Because you love me and I am a girl.

I could be a lesbian.

You're a man?

No.

Is Scotland better than England?

Not only are you sexist and heteronormative, you're ethnocentric too.

You cannot claim ownership of that statement.

I totally own that statement.

Yes.

Seriously, who programs this thing?

8 comments:

  1. What an unfortunate misnomer on the programmer's part...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Who programs this thing? We do. That's the sad reality of how Clever Bot works - it imitates past conversations, slowly growing more similar to the average correspondent. Do we really expect the average internet user to be any less sexist, heteronormative, and ethnocentric than society at large?

    ReplyDelete
  3. @The Nerd

    Ooooh... Well, that's interesting. And by interesting, I mean sad.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What The Nerd said. Everything Cleverbot says is something someone else has said to it.

    A simplified example: Cleverbot says "Hi." Human says "Hello." After a while, Cleverbot will learn to associate those terms. From that point onwards, if you say, "Hello," it'll say "Hi" because that's what it has seen others do.

    So Typical Internet Person says sexist shit about videogames, and Cleverbot learns to say sexist shit about videogames. Don't blame the creator; blame the average person who talks to it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You'll just have to spend a few hours correcting it on that, and maybe it'll stick. People have taught it to count that way already :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's gotten past the boy/girl thing... Now it claims to be a unicorn! LOL
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY

    ReplyDelete
  7. on the same lines... here's conversation..


    Cleverbot: Hello.

    User: Do you play WOW?

    Cleverbot: No.

    User: Why not?

    Cleverbot: Because I said so.

    User: You're a girl, then?

    Cleverbot: Yes.

    User: A lesbian girl?

    Cleverbot: What are you talking about?

    User: Do you not like lesbians?

    Cleverbot: I don't like it.

    User: And gays?

    Cleverbot: No.

    User: So you're homophobic, then?

    Cleverbot: Yes.

    User: You should be called homobot, then, not clever bot...

    Cleverbot: You only say that because you don't understand half the things I say to you.

    User: I meant you should be called homophobot...

    Cleverbot: *looks down with a broken heart* ok then ill leave.


    owned!

    ReplyDelete

Comments = rainbows, kittens and hugs.
No comments = sad bloggers.

Don't be an obvious troll!

I would prefer if you don't post as "Anonymous". You don't have to sign in to comment, so just pick a name and stick with it. Just so that I can have a better idea of who's commenting. Thanks!