Chatbots.org launches the largest specialized research area on humanlike conversational artificial intelligence in its new 2.7 release on http://www.chatbots.org/research.

The New Sections

Universities: We have uploaded more than 13,000 universities, research institutes and schools. It is a combination of various resources, enriched with what we could grab from university websites and WHOIS information. We also obtained information manually; it was a hunt to get everything perfect.

The university section is the foundation of our research tab as all other content are eventually linked to universities. This will soon allow us to plot reputations per university and per subfield of humanlike conversational AI.

Individual contribution score: Chatbots.org members can earn contribution points by adding content to Chatbots.org, such as writing news articles, uploading papers and leaving comments. Academic papers are rated with the highest contribution points. The member’s individual contribution score is an indication for their personal contribution to the field of humanlike conversational AI. Their score is personal and travels along with them when they switch employers.

Universities contribution score: We introduce a new unique way to rank universities based on the work of their current employees. This differs from a reputation ranking based on eye-catching projects from the past, which does not say anything about their skills today (as people might have moved on to other institutions). Universities that manage to attract talent with high personal contribution scores will notice that their institutional reputation will grow enormously. This new university ranking system shows where there is experience, where the high intelligent people work and where the most interesting discussions are going on during lunch.

Research News: The home page of our research tab is also our research news area; it reveals news on the latest insights in human-human communication, science lab technology and recent innovations from all over the world. The writing style is low-entrance and should also be accessible to non-scientists. Updated information about academic events is shown here. Eventually, we will show leading elements from this ‘research home page’ on the upcoming new Chatbots.org home page.

Library: Our library contains books, e-books and other publications covering elements of humanlike conversational AI. Members can add books to our library, write reviews and share their preferences via Facebook & Twitter. Books that are ‘liked’ frequently by visitors will be shown more prominently. Those who find their books listed can claim their books; to make sure these are listed on their own profile. Obviously, books can be purchased through the world’s leading online bookstores.

Journals: We are very excited to reveal more than one thousand journals that are relevant to the field of humanlike conversational AI. Beside journals in linguistics, sociology and computer science, we have also listed journals in biometrics, psychology and virtual worlds. These are just examples as there are so many academic fields involved in this matter that the list is almost endless. Obviously, members can add relevant journals they have stumbled upon via a convenient form.

Papers: We have made a modest start with this paper section by uploading all (abstracts of) papers of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents. Papers can be uploaded by either authors or third parties. Authors who will find their own papers listed on Chatbots.org, uploaded by someone else, can claim their papers to make sure these are listed on their own profile and to make sure that they will be added to their own personal contribution scores. Papers can be purchased through the links to the detail pages on the publishers’ website. We will negotiate better prices for Chatbots.org members as soon as we will reach the critical mass. Papers will be linked to the publications they are published in: whether books or journals. We hope and expect that this section will grow rapidly; revealing even more interesting information in our exciting field.

Events: We have listed the most relevant academic events in our area, plotted them on a calendar which can be refined by geographic area. Visitors can immediately save event details in their calendars with just one mouse click. We have also linked events in ‘events series’ as many academic events are organized annually and have a separate organizing university and website each year ; we now grouped this information together. In the future we will plot these events on a Google map and we will also facilitate Chatbots.org members with the option to book their tickets through this website. As with all new areas members can add events in case we have missed one.

Publishers: We have added a list of publishers who are active in the field of humanlike conversational artificial intelligence. It is quite convenient to get a first speedy impression which publishers to approach in case you want to write a book on this area.

Future

We have created a future proof framework which will prove itself to be highly useful for academic researchers & businesses, for professionals like chatbot developers & designers, and for amateur programmers and users. We expect that the content quantity in this new section will grow very rapidly as content is the key to gain more visibility for individuals, universities and research institutes. We will also work with publishers to automatically receive new papers and to streamline the purchase of papers.

In the near future, we will plot activities on subareas on a world map. We really believe talent has the right to know where the best researchers on certain subfields of humanlike conversational AI work in order to find the most exciting work environment they could ever think of.

We will also strengthen our ties with universities. We will allow universities to publish job offerings, project proposals and call for papers. We would like to facilitate the events they may organize and we would love to generate funding for academic research by connecting them to businesses. How cool would that be?

It is all about realizing our mission: advancing humanlike conversational AI worldwide.

What’s next?

Once we are back from our deserved holiday we will move on with:

1. Companies section (version 2.8): This area within the business tab will contain a vendor selection tool allowing buyers of humanlike conversational AI to select vendors. Although, completeness is and remains our credo and we will thus list all vendors by definition, this new section offers vendors great opportunities to profile themselves as a really serious party to consider; to stand out from the crowd. Some developers have already pre-joined the program , who now benefit from an additional free visibility as shown on http://www.chatbots.org/companies.
2. Forum upgrades (version 2.9): We have learned a lot during operating our AI Zone forum, the forum board for AI programmers, and we will apply our lessons learned in this new version. As we will also add new forum boards in the future (for example on animation, on speech and on robo ethics) we will also use obtained insights in these new forum boards.
3. New home page (version 3.0): In this version we will launch a brand new, sleek, eye catching, news- like styled home page, that provides access to the rest of the website in a transparent way. We will also add more graphical elements to enhance the visitor experience. The new home page will be a true milestone in the development of Chatbots.org and it will mark the end of phase one (which we originally wrote in the beginning of 2009). But no worries: we have doubled our wish list since then.

Feedback

We’d love to hear your feedback! Leave specific comments about the research section in the comment form, or add a feature request if you have an another idea to improve the website.