=> simlbot.com

>> SIML - The Synthetic Intelligence Markup Language

>> Next generation Chatbot architecture by Synthetic Intelligence Network

>> SIML is the next step in Chatbot technology that pushes the state-of-the-art a step further. With SIML you will never miss anything as we have put it all under the hood for you. Developers can easily integrate Natural Language Processing into their .Net applications while the users can enjoy fast intelligent conversations.

=> wiki.syn.co.in

=> forum.syn.co.in

=> github.com/Synthetic-Intelligence-Network

... Iron Man on the front page. Let’s all ignore copyrights and see if DC comics still has lawyers. </annoyance>

At a glance of the documentation it’s AIML with a console, Javascript, sets of words, and splitting input at punctuation marks. Am I overlooking the NLP functions or is that it?

... Iron Man on the front page. Let’s all ignore copyrights and see if DC comics still has lawyers. </annoyance>

At a glance of the documentation it’s AIML with a console, JavaScript, sets of words, and splitting input at punctuation marks. Am I overlooking the NLP functions or is that it?

Firstly I am Leslie Timmy also known as Revarn. I am the lead architect at Synthetic Intelligence Network.

Yesterday as we were doing some SEO on links to SimlBot.com I hit this post. And it was just hard to resist pointing out the flaws in your assumption that SIML is AIML…

I do not take the statement made by you as an insult towards the hard work done by our team. But instead I will try to answer the part in your statement that begs to be answered.

... Iron Man on the front page. Let’s all ignore copyrights and see if DC comics still has lawyers. </annoyance>

The day this topic was created in this forum we did not mention the website address to anyone not even in our Forum which is heading for 1500 members. As Sir Marcus has personally met me and we discussed about SIML I had mentioned the website address to him. The website was still under construction but was being tested on multiple browser platforms. So the Iron Man image on the front page was never meant to be used in our production site after all. But I cannot blame you for the insight as there was no “text” on the webpage stating that it was “under construction” or one of the static image resource cache was not flushed on time by the administrators.

At a glance of the documentation it’s AIML with a console, JavaScript, sets of words, and splitting input at punctuation marks.

SIML was under development for 2 years and was being tested and refined for the past 6 months. This initiative was realized when we wrote our official interpreter for AIML 3 years ago but had a number of issues trying to use NLP functions of Syn Engine via AIML interface. Despite the fact that the development had started we didn’t retire support for Verbots, AIML and Pandorabots interface. Syn Engine is used by Syn Virtual Assistant which is currently installed in over 100,000 computers world-wide and is still in its Prototype stage.

It’s AIML?

No.

Both SIML and AIML target different domains of Chatbot developers and reflect a great magnitude of architectural differences. Unlike many developers who came up with their own architectures and sorted to criticizing AIML to prove their architecture was superior. We chose the humble-path. AIML is simple, can be easily applied and has a simple pattern matching system which makes it popular among beginner Chatbot enthusiasts. On the contrary SIML targets expert Chatbot developers who work with Microsoft platforms under .Net Framework and Linux under Mono. Though we tried our best to keep things as simple as possible with SIML many advanced features called in for some complexity.

The very foundation of SIML is different as it starts with a Concept instead of individual Units of knowledge grouped inside a document. We do not just put categories (Models in SIML) and set patterns. In SIML we declare a Concept we add attributes that manipulate the behavior of the Concept run-time and then we add in simple or complex Models. SIML supports 12 Pattern elements that include (but are not limited to) keywords, sets, dynamic sets, regular expressions, JavaScript and even conditions. It’s the first XML based Chatbot architecture that has an in-built standard compliant parser for EmotionML 1.0 - the current web standard for embedding emotional responses in entities.

Some of the few architectural differences include the following.

1. Multiple Patterns in 1 Model
2. Regular Expressions
3. Greedy Sets and Regex
4. Dynamic Sets
5. Nested Modelling
6. Labelled Responses
7. Contextual Memory
8. Listed Variables/Settings
9. In-built support for EmotionML 1.0
10. Extended JavaScript support with In-Built Js Interpreter
11. Conditional Patterns
12. Scripted Patterns
13. Numerous Operators for Variable Comparisons
14. One element many features instead of Many element many features.
15. Predicted Responses.
16. Public, Private, Repeatable and Non-Repeatable Concepts.
17. Advanced filtration that even includes Regex
18. Extraction of multiple inputs based on strings, words and even Regex
19. And a lot more…

I could go on and on here but I have to rest my case regarding the differences and advances made as I am short of time. You may read the specification in our Wiki to see the actual architectural differences.

Commonalities between SIML and AIML do exist as I humbly believe that some of the features offered by AIML should be common to all Chat architectures. And that is the reason why I personally asked the team members to mention it in our disclaimer that we ourselves would like to introduce beginner developers to AIML first.

With a Console?

The official IDE designed for SIML is Syn Chatbot Studio and comes with Auto-Completion, JavaScript Evaluator, Regular Expression Tester, AIML Converter, Real-Time Response Statistics, Stack information, Project Stats Chart, internal Bot Logs and even Code-Analysis which studies the SIML code you write and informs you if you have any similar patterns, missed some attributes configurations, used unknown elements, declared infinite loops, scripts and a lot more. No other Chatbot IDE currently has such features. Moreover the IDE is deployed as a ClickOnce application that checks our special Server for updates and deploys updates and bug-fixes to all users world-wide without them having to check our website for updates and that is exactly how we keep things in sync especially when we add features to the official Interpreter for SIML i.e. Syn Bot.

continued…

Sets of Words?

They are not just sets of words but are objects that are converted, optimized and stored in an extremely fast O(1) operation based retrieval systems making it possible to match user inputs to larger Sets and on top of that the matching algorithm is Greedy in Nature.

Sets of words in patterns are not that easy as there are plenty of things one has to take into consideration (priority of evaluation, conflicts between similar sets or 2 different types of sets, conflicts between a set and a regex, behavior is a parent-child related bot system etc) before slapping in dynamic sets, regular expressions and keywords into the Pattern element.

Splitting input at punctuation marks?

For an architecture that supports regular expressions in Patterns there are numerous cases to consider.

One such case (out of 100s)…

Consider a user input “Update product A to 8.5.2” how would one prevent the input from being split after the “.” in 8.5.2? Regular Expressions would then fail to capture the specified version as the sentence would be split and the input would become “Update product A to 8”, “5” and “2”.
This is where the underlying splitting mechanism plays its role by prioritizing the splitting event based on the configuration that is loaded prior to SIML Models.

JavaScript?

We didn’t just thrown in a feature called JavaScript-support. We actually added an interpreter for JavaScript.  JavaScript can be used within Patterns, Previous elements and Responses. The interpreter for JavaScript is in 100% compliance with ECMA 5.1 and is in-built into the SIML interpreter’s class library which means you can use JavaScript functions in any platform that supports .Net or Mono without actually having any offshore interpreter requirements. The JavaScript interpreter has passed over 12,000 Unit-Tests. And it’s all within 1 Portable Class Library.

Am I overlooking the NLP functions or is that it?

Yes, you have overlooked the NLP functions beyond any reasonable doubt.

We were planning to bring in all .Net and Mono Developers working with SIML to Chatbots.org for discussion and suggestions but with your remarks being in the first thread we may unfortunately have to avoid all references to the forum.

Lastly, despite all the years of hard work and research over SIML we did expect criticism but not in this completely vacuous form so I personally recommend that before one tries to become the supreme judge of the universe, at least be fair.

Feel free to ask the moderators to delete my post if it is an obstacle to your business. Apart from the Iron Man image which got things off on the wrong foot, nothing I said was critisism, just a layman’s impression. By “it’s AIML” I refer to the structure of XML tags that looks particularly similar. You can interpret this as a negative remark or as a positive one as it will suit people who are already familiar with AIML. I don’t mind mentioning that I didn’t spend a lot of time reading everything, I got as far as reading through the quick start documentation, which, if you do want fair critisism, took me some time to find on the page.

Ah, forget that, I see you now have a quick start link at the top.

You may also note that I mentioned the strong points of your system, and despite my tone, this was deliberate. I just don’t have much time to spend reading documentation to find what I’m interested in (in my case: NLP). Seeing as I am so far the only person to post, I would say I am not the only one, and coming down here to engage with the people is a wise choice. So, I’d still be interested to hear about those NLP functions I overlooked.

Actually, Don, I haven’t posted yet because I’m both stuck on my laptop (long, sad, ugly story), and pressed for time. I plan on posting a reply later today or tomorrow, though.

Welcome Leslie,
I did a quick pass through your site. Later on I may download the developers App and try a quick bot.

SMIL does have strong similarities to AIML. People familiar with AIML will recognize many of the conventions.

2 of the the things you mentioned that jump out as key differences (which I suggested during the development of AIML 2.0) are:
- Multiple input patterns -> 1 output (no need for SRAIs)
- Support for Regular expression on input (more powerful input screening=fewer patterns)

As a JavaScript guy, I also like the native support for JavaScript.

Dave Morton - Dec 18, 2014:

Actually, Don, I haven’t posted yet because I’m both stuck on my laptop (long, sad, ugly story), and pressed for time.

Proves my point about not having much time better than counters it, Dave . Anyway, as you are a moderator, feel free to edit my snappier remarks and roll out the carpet. I think SIML developers would be a welcome addition here.