hi guys,
(sorry if I posted this somewhere else, but I can’t find that post now)

I’m creating a lifecoach chatbot.

BUT - How do I get my chatbot to take people through a series of questions?

I’m using the annotated ALICE default aiml set on pandorabot, and as soon as user makes a comment, the chatbot replies intelligently but then has lost the thread and doesn’t go back to the question.

e.g. what is your name?
may I ask you coaching questions?
what is your goal?
what is your biggest challenge?

thanks!
David

Hi, David, and welcome from another David.

Please don’t worry about posting the same questions in multiple forums. Not everyone visits every place, so the more forums you post in, the more likely you are to get results. (you posted in the ALICE AI Foundation forums, BTW)

Sadly, I don’t have a better answer for you for this than the one that Square Bear (AKA Steve) had already posted in the ALICE AI forums at http://forum.alicebot.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&p=1191 - Steve’s pretty much the expert when it comes to AIML, so I tend to accept his suggestions.

Hey I hadn’t seen that Dave - thank you! I replied there.

Hope my suggestions were helpful but if you need any further help, please feel free to post. You are probably better posting here than the ALICE board, as I am more likely to see it here.

Interesting.

Are you recording the replies, or saving them in an archive of sorts?  In other words, is the answer truly relevant and is the answer something your bot will return to later in the conversation?  For example, are you concerned that the replies are accurate… i.e.. “What is your favorite color - Answer: Tuesday,” or that they are contradictory, or… are you only interested in moving on to the next question without regard to the content of the reply?

Will you be involved with analyzing the responses and replying personally, or is this something like a Rogerian psychotherapist where the process is meant to simply cause the user to reflect on their choices?

One of the best examples I’ve seen recently of a bot taking charge of the conversation is Brian Rigsby’s Izar bot from the BackTalk app.  Here is transcript of Izar from the Loebner contest:

http://www.paulmckevitt.com/loebner2013/testing/transcripts/izar.txt

You can see that many of the bot’s responses conclude with a leading question: “Who is your mother?”, “Was that your pick too?”, “What kind of music do you like?” etc.

Note that building a bot to ask leading questions did not require any special programming or changes to AIML.  It’s just a clever way of writing the bot content. 

Hey Thunder Walk,
great questions.

My task right now is to recognize when they have answered the question properly, rather than dodging it or totally writing something out of left field. So I can then go to the next question.

The answers will be stored and summarized for them later, and if they will have the option to have their answers reviewed by a flesh and blood life coach, in which case the answers will be forwarded to the coach. (I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it!)

SIMPLE TRANSCRIPT (REVERSE ORDER):
Human: yes
Dr. No: Excellent - we are making great progress.more money is a worthy goal.

Human: more money
Dr. No: You want more?You said “more money”. Checking - is this your goal?

Human: Sure
Dr. No: Sweet! What goal could you achieve in 6 months time that would REALLY put a smile on your face?

Human: David
Dr. No: Nice to meet you David. Are you open to some coaching questions?

I’ll check out that Izar bot Richard - thanks.