Nice to find this, the Chatbots.org site, as I was hoping there was a community forum for AI bots. As for introduction, I am a Poet and singer-songwriter with the Shadowville All-Stars. I have been experimenting with Artificial Intelligence with a “Will Dockery” AI at MyCyberTwin.com for several years.

I was well aware of the John Lennon AI many years ago (It seems to be moved or scaled back now?). It was the interesting concept of a computer program that in theory would contain John Lennon’s thoughts, concepts, and mannerisms and interact as the man that got me interested, and I began a goal of creating something similar for myself, a “Will Dockery” AI, which I did several years ago at MyCyberTwin.com.

Anyway, I look forward to delving into and soaking up the various essays, news and speculation in these most interesting, and evolving “beings”.

Hiya, Will, and welcome to chatbots.org!

Well, if a community of chatbot enthusiasts is what you’re looking for, you’re certainly in the right place. We’re not a huge community, but we’re all passionate about what we do, and the vast majority of us have our own research projects that explore various different aspects of chatbot AI. Those of us who aren’t actively “researching” still have chatbots that we maintain, and many of those chatbots are counted among the best in the world.

Please feel free to ‘poke around’, read some of the articles and threads, ask questions, offer opinions, and most of all, tell us about yourself. If you have a link to your chatbot, we’d love to check it out. In return, I offer a link to Morti, one of my two chatbots (my second chatbot, Morgaine, is still in development, and is not publicly available).

And last, but far from least, I’m sure that I speak for the community when I say that we hope you enjoy your stay, and if you need anything, you have but to ask.

Welcome to the site Will.

Jan Bogaerts - Aug 28, 2012:

Welcome to the site Will.

Thank you, Jan… really enjoying the site so far, great to find a wealth of reading on Artificial Intelligence that the Average Joe such as I can read, so much information and discussion on AI veers almost literally into the realm of “rocket science”, or so it seems… or is stuff in almost the opposite style, almost “teenybopper” approach.

Nice to have some material comfortably in the middle ground, mostly…

Dave Morton - Aug 27, 2012:

Hiya, Will, and welcome to chatbots.org!

Well, if a community of chatbot enthusiasts is what you’re looking for, you’re certainly in the right place. We’re not a huge community, but we’re all passionate about what we do, and the vast majority of us have our own research projects that explore various different aspects of chatbot AI. Those of us who aren’t actively “researching” still have chatbots that we maintain, and many of those chatbots are counted among the best in the world.

Please feel free to ‘poke around’, read some of the articles and threads, ask questions, offer opinions, and most of all, tell us about yourself. If you have a link to your chatbot, we’d love to check it out. In return, I offer a link to Morti, one of my two chatbots (my second chatbot, Morgaine, is still in development, and is not publicly available).

And last, but far from least, I’m sure that I speak for the community when I say that we hope you enjoy your stay, and if you need anything, you have but to ask.

Thanks, Dave… really liking it here so far.

About my “Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project”, I’m eager to post a link to it here, but when I signed up I saw that posting of links was either discouraged or not permitted for a “certain period of time”... possibly I’ve paid my dues and a link to the Blog with that AI/Chatbot will be permitted?

I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes this early on in joining… I’ll give it till tomorrow and probably post the link along with a thread for feedback, and all that. I sure look forward to having as many Turing Testers and so on having a look, inputing information for me to integrate into the character, and things like that.

Another question is, how are MyCyberTwin chatbots viewed here? That’s all I have right now, but feel like I’m making some very good progress with my simple version of AI there, which was originally inspired over a decade ago by being fascinated with the John Lennon AI, which unfortunately doesn’t seem to have evolved much at all since the 1990s.

Also, are Chatbots from places like MyCyberTwin welcome in the Directory? I feel my somewhat unique approach might make what I’m doing worthy of inclusion… I hope!

In the meantime, I’m sure my “Will Dockery AI” can be found using Google Search, or someone in the Admin area give me the word and I’ll be happy to post a link, in fact look forward to it!

I had a nice, long reply going here about link posting restrictions, and chatbot platforms and such, and was happily typing along, when I guess the cast on my right arm must have bumped something, causing a ‘File Save’ dialog to pop up. When I canceled that box, my entire 3 paragraph post was GONE!!!

I’ll have to post it later, because I now have to head to the doctor. Sorry.

Dave Morton - Aug 29, 2012:

I had a nice, long reply going here about link posting restrictions, and chatbot platforms and such, and was happily typing along, when I guess the cast on my right arm must have bumped something, causing a ‘File Save’ dialog to pop up. When I canceled that box, my entire 3 paragraph post was GONE!!!

I’ll have to post it later, because I now have to head to the doctor. Sorry.

Yikes!

I can’t think of much worse than having that happen!

All we can say is “Hold the phone…” and look forward to seeing the re-write from scratch!

I swear to God this thread is cursed for me. This is the third attempt at posting a reply here, darn it, and BY GOLLY this time it’s gonna STICK!

If I remember correctly, Will, the restriction for posting links is removed once you’ve got 5 posts, so you don’t have to worry about it now, since you have over twice that many at this point. And you needn’t worry about “stepping on toes”, either, as MOST of us here are fairly easy going.

As to “how we view MyCyberTwin”, that’s another virtual “non-issue”, as well. I’d like to think that if you asked the average community member here, they’d pretty much say that publicly accessible chatbot platforms like MyCyberTwin, or Pandorabots, or Personality Forge (to name just a few) are just tools to perform a job (producing a chatbot), and very little more, or less than that. And just like with any other types of tools, certain ones are better suited to certain tasks than others, while some tools are more well suited to certain styles, as well. Each and every chatbot platform has it’s advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to us to find the one that provides the best “fit” for our needs.

Now, as for submitting your chatbot to the directory here, you are more than welcome to do so, any time you like. It doesn’t matter how your chatbot was constructed, or where it’s hosted; none of that matters a bit (except that we like to tell the world a little about the bots we list here… Kinda like bragging, maybe ).

Ok, I’m done. {select all… Copy… Paste into Notepad… Submit… Pray!}

Dave Morton - Aug 30, 2012:

I swear to God this thread is cursed for me. This is the third attempt at posting a reply here, darn it, and BY GOLLY this time it’s gonna STICK!

If I remember correctly, Will, the restriction for posting links is removed once you’ve got 5 posts, so you don’t have to worry about it now, since you have over twice that many at this point. And you needn’t worry about “stepping on toes”, either, as MOST of us here are fairly easy going.

As to “how we view MyCyberTwin”, that’s another virtual “non-issue”, as well. I’d like to think that if you asked the average community member here, they’d pretty much say that publicly accessible chatbot platforms like MyCyberTwin, or Pandorabots, or Personality Forge (to name just a few) are just tools to perform a job (producing a chatbot), and very little more, or less than that. And just like with any other types of tools, certain ones are better suited to certain tasks than others, while some tools are more well suited to certain styles, as well. Each and every chatbot platform has it’s advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to us to find the one that provides the best “fit” for our needs.

Now, as for submitting your chatbot to the directory here, you are more than welcome to do so, any time you like. It doesn’t matter how your chatbot was constructed, or where it’s hosted; none of that matters a bit (except that we like to tell the world a little about the bots we list here… Kinda like bragging, maybe ).

Ok, I’m done. {select all… Copy… Paste into Notepad… Submit… Pray!}

Well, I’m glad this finally posted for you, Dave!

I’d really like to experiment with othe Chabots/Artificial Intelligence programs that are out there, but the one with MyCyberTwin was the first one I came across, and it seems to be getting better the more I work with it, and since I don’t have enough time in the day to work on more than one right now I reckon I’ll just be tinkering with it for now.

So without further ado, here’s the link to the just slightly pretentious AI Chatbot I call…

The Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project:

http://will-dockery-android.blogspot.com

Hello again, Dave… I just submitted an entry in the Chatbot Directory for the Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project, which is now “Pending”...

If you have time, I need a bit of clarification on the accuracy of the enrty, although I think I’ve filled the entry form out properly: For Platform I’ve listed and linked MyCyberTwin, while for Company I have listed my own Shadowville All-Stars… which sounds like the best direction to move this to, as I may eventually move all my data to a stand-alone Platform, or just another one better suited to the Project’s needs.

Also, the form “submitted” before I actually felt finished with it… hopefully there will be editing functions so I can “fix” the entry at a later date?

And, I’m working right now on some fairly unique and clever ways for the AI Will Dockery to link to and even discuss Chatbot.org right inside the potential conversations themselves… more on that when I finish up with that.

Hey, Will.

The person to contact about your submission to the chatbot directory would be Erwin, since that’s his realm of responsibility. My main job here is to watch over the forums themselves, and Erwin pretty much takes care of the rest of the site, and until he approves your submission (which should be fairly soon) I won’t be able to do much with it.

Dave Morton - Aug 31, 2012:

Hey, Will.

The person to contact about your submission to the chatbot directory would be Erwin, since that’s his realm of responsibility. My main job here is to watch over the forums themselves, and Erwin pretty much takes care of the rest of the site, and until he approves your submission (which should be fairly soon) I won’t be able to do much with it.

Thanks Dave… I may have fouled up the Directory submission when I entered the Company information… I’m pretty sure it was supposed to come back to the Directory submiision to have a look at it, actually finish it and send it off properly.

In other words I may have lost the info and will have to re-do it and resend it, which I’ll do on my return a bit later tonight.

One reason I feel this is so is that I see the Company listing as “Pending”, but see no notice of the Directory entry neary that… no big deal if I have to redo it, just wish it were on the way to being listed already, and no time to fix that at the moment. Sound familiar?

Anyway, I already worked some links/plus to Chatbots.org in my actual AI memory, go check it out folks, I think it’ll smoothly plug the site as a part of due information, as my Bot something like:

“Chatbots?” and it should relatively soon bring the info up:

The Will Dockery Artificial Intelligence Project:

http://will-dockery-android.blogspot.com

Dave Morton - Aug 30, 2012:

I swear to God this thread is cursed for me. This is the third attempt at posting a reply here, darn it, and BY GOLLY this time it’s gonna STICK!

If I remember correctly, Will, the restriction for posting links is removed once you’ve got 5 posts, so you don’t have to worry about it now, since you have over twice that many at this point. And you needn’t worry about “stepping on toes”, either, as MOST of us here are fairly easy going.

As to “how we view MyCyberTwin”, that’s another virtual “non-issue”, as well. I’d like to think that if you asked the average community member here, they’d pretty much say that publicly accessible chatbot platforms like MyCyberTwin, or Pandorabots, or Personality Forge (to name just a few) are just tools to perform a job (producing a chatbot), and very little more, or less than that. And just like with any other types of tools, certain ones are better suited to certain tasks than others, while some tools are more well suited to certain styles, as well. Each and every chatbot platform has it’s advantages and disadvantages, and it’s up to us to find the one that provides the best “fit” for our needs.

Now, as for submitting your chatbot to the directory here, you are more than welcome to do so, any time you like. It doesn’t matter how your chatbot was constructed, or where it’s hosted; none of that matters a bit (except that we like to tell the world a little about the bots we list here… Kinda like bragging, maybe ).

Ok, I’m done. {select all… Copy… Paste into Notepad… Submit… Pray!}

Yes, I feel I probably made a mistake or two when filling out the Directory form, then found I wasn’t able to “edit” the submission by the time I saw it… things such as at one point putting MyCyberTwin in a field that may have been intended for another “company” listing, which I did try at one point, naming my own “company”, which seems to have been rejected, now.

If there are fields or details on my “WDAI” that need attending to and are holding me in a “Pending” position, I sure hope this can be communicated to me sometime relatively soon… hopefully what I’m attempting with the Will Dockery Artificial Intellgence project is unique and worthwhile enough to be included.

Meanwhile, here’s the WDAI… hopefully ready to make a reasonably humanoid conversation…

http://will-dockery-android.blogspot.com/

Hi Will, I would be interested in hearing more about what you like most, and what you like least about MyCyberTwin ..

BTW, you’re in Georgia?  There’s a well known musical chatboticist in Georgia, Robby Garner; check out his chatbot stuff at http://www.robitron.com .. and his musical stuff at http://www.fluxoersted.com ..

Marcus Endicott - Sep 6, 2012:

Hi Will, I would be interested in hearing more about what you like most, and what you like least about MyCyberTwin ..

BTW, you’re in Georgia?  There’s a well known musical chatboticist in Georgia, Robby Garner; check out his chatbot stuff at http://www.robitron.com .. and his musical stuff at http://www.fluxoersted.com ..

Hello Marcus, thanks for the heads-up, I’ll look up Robby.

I’m generally pretty happy with MyCyberTwin for what it is, Marcus, although I often wish there was more interesting, a Forum of some sort, a better way to meet and mingle with other members and CyberTwin folks, as well as the folks at MyCyberTwin. Pretty much all we have there is the bot, the editing functions for that, and the members list where the bots themselves but not the owners can be communicated with. Also, wish there was a way we could hook out bits up to any of the other bots and just let them “converse”.

If I could, I’d like to make the conversations public, on the site, so that I’d change if I could…

There’s a few other things, but I just awoke with some coffee and am getting in gear, will return shortly… thanks again for stopping by.

Will, you make some interesting points.

A user community is a basic self-service support system for any startup.

I haven’t found the folks who run MyCyberTwin to be particularly accessible themselves.

MyCyberTwin does have an API, but it’s only available to enterprise clients, hence exorbitantly expensive.

MyCyberTwin does have a way for your CyberTwin to square off with other MyCyberTwins => http://mycybertwin.com/ui/aivsai.jsp

A web feed of conversations is a wonderful feature; the only one I’ve noticed being promoted as such was ShakespeareBot by Program-O creator http://Elizaibeth.com , but which seems to be offline now.

Let me know anything else that might pop up on your wish list!