Thought I’d say hi to the community - by the way, the lego profile picture really DOES look like me

I’ve just finished a degree in English Literature where my Dissertation was a focus on the evolution of robotic science fiction in the context of Vernor Vinge’s 1993 NASA lecture about the “Singularity” and Mori’s “Uncanny Valley”.  I used a Marxist methodology which mapped the works of authors such as Asimov, Dick and Gibson not only to their social and historical contexts but also the limits of technology at the time they were writing. 

I’ve become completely hooked, and I’m currently considering extending these studies to a Master’s Degree, and potentially a book ...   I’m also intrigued by the possibility of creating my own chatbot at some stage!

So that’s me - hope to get to know some of you over the next few weeks and months ...

Hi, Abel, and welcome to chatbots.org!

All I can say about the avatar pic is that I hope the “significant other” doesn’t mind the plasticine sheen to your skin, or the non-removable beanie!

Seriously, though, that’s a fascinating subject for a dissertation. And it sounds like it was a lot of work. My hat’s off to you. It’s been said that with some of the current chatbot “technologies” available today it takes more creative writing skills than it does programming skills, so if/when you choose to take the plunge and create your own chatbot, you stand a real chance of creating a successful “cyber-friend”. Personally, I think it takes a good balance of each, with the more sophisticated platforms requiring a different balance that’s a bit heavier on the programming side, but that’s just my opinion.

Anyway, I hope you find your visits here to be fun and informative, and if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, ideas (etc. etc. yada yada ad infinitum), please don’t hesitate to share!

> http://twitter.com/mendicot/status/199813134825955328

Artificial intelligence will make “Republicans” obsolete; because, the only way forward in a labor force dominated by robots is socialism ..

= = =

> http://www.meta-guide.com/home/twitterbots/weavrs

Hi Abel, you should check out the whole @Weavrs trip (see above link); they are “socialbots” being referred to as “infomorphs”....

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomorph

Thanks, Dave and Marcus.  The beanie is pretty much non-removable in real life, as is the camera, so quite a few people were completely taken aback when the avatar first appeared, thinking I had photoshopped my expression onto a blank (which I haven’t).

It was a lot of work for a literature dissertation, because I basically had to immerse myself in real-life cybernetics and AI as well as studying the literary works themselves, but it WAS absolutely fascinating!

I can definitely see myself attempting my own chatbot (as time permits!).  I’ve had some very interesting conversations with various chatbots over the last year or so.  You might be interested to hear that as a seminar group (Science Fiction) we collectively had a chat with a bot early in the year and the results were very revealing.  The bot (which we found on turinghub.com) was clearly nonplussed by some of our random statements, but you know what?  Afterwards, in group discussions, some of us expressed regret that we hadn’t treated the bot with the ‘respect’ of trying to converse with it as we would a human being, and wondered whether the results would have been different if we had!  That’s been something I’ve been pursuing on and off since, and I find the whole question of machine ethics not just interesting, but increasingly important and, dare I say, a measure of our own humanity.

Anyway, I’m off to check out the @Weavrs ...

Hi! I’m Jana a new member here.

I would like to say hi to everyone!

Hi, Jana, and welcome to chatbots.org!

Please feel free to tell us a bit about yourself and your interests (especially with regard to AI/chatbots), so that we might get to know you better.