No it’s fine. Happy to help. I started by checking out a few AIML files to see the sort of things it could do, as I find it easier to learn something by seeing examples.

To give something back to the community, I have a few files here which you are welcome to learn from http://www.square-bear.co.uk/aiml/

Any questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to guide you.

While there is a lot of talk of AIML in this thread, I would suggest that for the purposes the OP seeks, a learning bot that can be taught and remember all the while having adequate NLP to parse input, AIML is simply inadequate.  I would suggest the OP try to make an AIML bot because it is so easy to get one up and running and then see for himself how limited they are.  I speak from experience because I curate a rather advanced bot that uses AIML (along with additional functions to parse an unknown input and create an answer on the fly).

Steve shows a good example of AIML “learning”- you tell the bot the “learn I am a tall human” and the bot will simply parse this to learn: I AM [a tall human] -> add to db INPUT: “WHAT AM I”, OUTPUT: “A TALL HUMAN”.  If you ask the bot “Am I short?”, there will be no connection with what it “learned” unless you add an additional function (coded in your interpreter) to find the associated facts like the opposite of tall is short, so also add to db INPUT: “AM I SHORT”, OUTPUT: “NO, YOU SAID YOU WERE A TALL HUMAN”. Of course, then you would have to cover the ‘human’ part of the original input to account for input like “AM I A TALL GOAT?”. This would be futile in AIML.

Hi Carl thanks for joining the conversation. Sounds like you get what I mean. I am really wanting to not only simulate conversation but also behind the scenes I would like to build some kind of system to simulate thinking. I have laid awake in bed (insomnia) many nights thinking how AI would work (from a non-programmer mindset) and just really need an outlet to mess around.

What language did you use for the other functions you were talking about here? “(along with additional functions to parse an unknown input and create an answer on the fly)”

Do you know other programming languages? If so what do you suggest?Why?

Peter Kometa - Oct 17, 2018:

What language did you use for the other functions you were talking about here? “(along with additional functions to parse an unknown input and create an answer on the fly)”

I use Program-O AIML interpreter, which is coded in PHP. I use CURL to Google things like autocorrection of input, searching unknown inputs. The built-in functions I use to parse and generate a reply currently include using Markov chains.  I also use the residual conversation buffer to generate a neural network for conversational context, but that is still very much a work in progress.  For research purposes, you might be interested in looking up lexical analysis, which gives some idea of how you analyze and tokenize input based on nouns, verbs, etc., and also knowledge bases like Wolfram Alpha.

Peter Kometa - Oct 17, 2018:

Do you know other programming languages? If so what do you suggest?Why?

When I finally get around to developing a new bot, it will be in Python probably since it is so widely used these days and I know it a bit.

Yeah python is what I was thinking about too. The other stuff you said is a bit intimidating though because I never heard of most of the tools and they have foreign sounding names lol but I will give them a googling. I have heard of Program-O from Steve but I could not find much info on it anywhere on google. What is it? Is it like Program-AB? I downloaded Program-AB and was able to get it to work partially after only a few minutes of playing with it but I ended up using pandorabots instead.

Also, I want to get the “brain” to work and do tasks without pressing enter every time you want it to do something like a constant process. This could mean just running a cycle every few seconds(whatever that entails, could be the same as pressing enter without typing any text) but I would also like to do heavy work during the cycles if necessary. This makes me think that a language from the 90s is not a good bet but I could be wrong as I know little about it. What do you think?

BTW….I like your avatar. What is it from? Your profile pic I mean

Oh yeah does anyone have a brief cheat sheet with all the commands/functions or whatever you want to call them? Basically anything you can type into AIML that is not english. Needs to have enough of a definition next to the item so a non programmer can get the idea of what it does. Or anything close to this?

I love these things as they help me a lot!

I posted a similar request in another topic on this site but this seems to be the active post at the moment. Thanks everyone.    :D

So Lexical analysis will break things into pieces/tokens and it assigns a value it understands to each? Could this be used for English sentences to break it down and attempt to understand them? I’m not sure if I’m understanding it correctly.

Steve Worswick - Oct 17, 2018:

No it’s fine. Happy to help. I started by checking out a few AIML files to see the sort of things it could do, as I find it easier to learn something by seeing examples.

To give something back to the community, I have a few files here which you are welcome to learn from http://www.square-bear.co.uk/aiml/

Any questions, just let me know and I’ll be happy to guide you.

Thanks. I was doing just that actually. I was trying to figure out how things worked and typed in some things for it to remember but could not find where it went. Didn’t give up. Just started doing some research to see if I could figure it out but have not so far. I downloaded a few files already from your site. I found them a few days ago. Thanks for making them available for free.

Carl B - Oct 17, 2018:

I would suggest the OP try to make an AIML bot because it is so easy to get one up and running…

This is the primary reason why I suggested it.

While I agree that AIML is inadequate to the end goal of creating a “conscious” chatbot, I’m of the firm opinion that NO currently accepted technology is. Granted, chatbot engines that use Python’s NLTK are MUCH closer to the goal, but the learning curve for something of that nature is prohibitively steep, even for someone with my programming/AI background; otherwise, I’d be working on it from that angle myself.

I am in agreeance now. I am realizing the AIML can simulate only but that’s OK. You will never know for sure what a human is thinking either so simulations are fine as long as it serves its purpose. Plus I gotta start somewhere and this seems like the most rewarding for beginners. I have just started to do a bot. Was wondering if you could help out with a simple question. Well simple for you lol. I’m editing a file I named UDQ and a can’t figure out how to use the <star> function to retrieve the wildcard to present to the user. I’ll worry about how to store the answer after.

hi, Peter. I’ll have to address this in the morning (it’s time for me to hit the hay right now), both with an explanation of the <star> tag, as well as some examples on how it’s used. I’m hoping that this will help to ensure both progress and success.

Thanks Dave. See ya later

I haven’t forgotten about this. Sadly, I’ve been too sick to do anything about it. I’ll try to get this addressed this evening, if I’m able.

Dave Morton - Oct 28, 2018:

I haven’t forgotten about this. Sadly, I’ve been too sick to do anything about it. I’ll try to get this addressed this evening, if I’m able.

Thanks Dave. Its no rush. I’m actually currently researching python now and may try to incorporate AIML if that seems like a good idea for my project but that is way down the road. AIML just did not seem to be a fit because of the short memory and lack of the ability to automatically create files based on newly learned info. Its kind of a custom thing I want to do. Like I said though that’s way down the road because I’m at the beginning stages right now and have not even started working on it yet. Just learning python right now and will be for quite a long time so there is no rush if you are not feeling well but even still it is highly appreciated whenever you do get to it. You will be in my prayers though Dave. Thank you

I believe I answered your question about your UDQ category on another thread. Are you still having trouble?