Chatbots.org Business News

The assignments are likely to be 2-3 months, possibly part-time.

The roles are:

- C# ASP.NET developer, to work primarily on the web based management/authoring tool for our chatbots. You need solid C# ASP.NET skills but the project is not over complex so would suit a more junior coder.
- Unity developer, with a focus on scripting/coding (C#) more than 3D design. Experience of deploying Unity on the web and for iOS/Android would also be highly desirable. May extend in to 2013.

Both roles are likely to start in mid/late September, and will be based at our offices in Birmingham, although some home working may be possible.

You must hold British citizenship and will be required to bring your passport to any initial interview.

Apply through http://www.daden.co.uk

Further details may be posted on our website in due course.

Creative Virtual is excited to announce that they recently become the Chatbots.org Advanced Business Member with the most contribution points. Chatbots.org is a website set up and maintained by Erwin Van Lun and his team as an industrial catalyst to advance the industry of Intelligent Virtual Characters. In 2011, Chatbots.org launched their Advanced Membership Program which allows companies to become more visible on the site, complete an enhanced membership profile and have access to statistics on their profile including lead reporting. Contribution points are earned by individuals associated with the company for activities such as adding new virtual assistant listings, submitting items for the business news section and leaving comments in various areas around the site. All companies added to the site as being involved with Intelligent Virtual Characters in some capacity are included on the Companies page with Advanced Business Members appearing at the top of the list sorted by years of commitment and contribution points.

With this article I would like to give you a behind-the-scenes look at how a system like Elbot is enhanced with new capabilities. I’ll do this by walking through one of Elbot’s newer features: color learning. If you would like to try the feature before reading all the spoilers, please visit Elbot.com, and ask Elbot if he can learn.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy from University of Louisville says that we should be aware of dangerously self-aware chatbots and he suggests to keep dangerous AI entities in virtual prison for avoiding social-engineering attacks. According to him, we should improve cybersecurity, because one day disobeying virtual agents could threaten humanity’s existence.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolski from University of Louisville claims that artificial conversational entities, shopping bots, and intelligent software applications became closer in their abilities and intelligence to human beings. Therefore arised the need to recognize and verify the identity of such entities just like it is necessary to authenticate the identity of people.

New, future oriented field of artimetrics, i.e. artificial biometrics, focuses on recognition, verification, and authentication of virtual agents, robots and other nonbiological entities. As a sub-field of cybersecurity, artimetrics is being developed in Cyber-Security Lab, which prides itself on being the world’s first to conduct this kind of research.

This video shows two animated speaking chatbots talking to other. I don’t know the creator nor something about the technology used for AI components, speech technology or avatar animation. I assume that the dialogue is a text to text interaction and that the speech is synthesized (i.e. the speech itself of the other chatterbot is not interpreted).

ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) is definitely the next step. I’m waiting for it!

A survey to find out what functionality users want to see when they interact with a virtual agent - or chatbot - has been launched by chatbot specialists Daden Limited (Daden). Increasing in popularity, chatbots (a computer programme which maintains a conversation with a person using natural language) are seen as a cost-effective support to customer service desks and live chat. Available 24/7, chatbots respond to queries and frequently asked questions enhancing customer experiences and directing visitors to relevant web pages. To consider future development of the industry as a whole, Daden have devised a short online survey to understand what functionality people would like to see in chatbots.

On November 1, 2011 I gave a talk to Google on natural language processing, including chatbot technology and issues in understanding simple English sentences for a story-game demo which tries to act out the sentences. Download the PDF or read full text below.

Fresh Perspectives

I am an AI research engineer. I want to create things that people use, but that stretch the boundaries of the possible. Whatever I work on, I research it and then try to come at it with a fresh perspective. A fresh perspective is something Google and I have in common, though we approach things from opposite directions. Typically my fresh perspectives involve understanding a domain and then writing a new application-specific scripting language to encapsulate insights I have gleaned. Google’s perspectives come from access to massive amounts of data and hardware.

I research everything. I even researched how to give this talk. I thought about making a lot of clever PowerPoint slides. Then I read up on using and abusing PowerPoint. I abandoned that plan.

It’s that time of the year again: children writing up their wishlists for the upcoming holidays. Ecreation once again enables kids to chat with their favorite holiday characters: Saint Nicholas who is a local custom on the 5th of December in the Netherlands and Belgium, and Santa Claus who visits most children worldwide during Christmas.

Since today Dutch speaking children can chat again with Saint Nicholas - known locally as Sinterklaas - by adding his address to their Live Messenger. A chatbot that has been programmed to act like the real Saint, responds to children with witty remarks and a sense of humor. Kids can play games with him, listen and sing-a-long to his songs, and even find recipes to make candy which is associated with the popular holiday, celebrated each year on the 5th of December. Boys and girls can even report naughty friends to the Saint! Since his “resurrection” in 2006, over 200,000 people had a chat with Sinterklaas.

Additionally, as Santa Claus will make an appearance again on Live Messenger in December. This chatterbot is speaking English and has a similar range of useful Christmas related functionalities.

“Each year the Sinterklaas and Santa chatbots are a huge success, ” says Sjoerd van Dijk of Ecreation, developer of these chatbots. “It enables children to have a fun time chatting and interacting with their favorite holiday characters, each year they are having a fun time using all the possible activities and functionalities.”

MyCyberTwin, a new generation of artificial intelligence technology, today announced the launch of its Turing Test Challenge. The contest gives developers the needed tools and instruction to leverage MyCybertwin’s AI Platform to build intelligent virtual agents (IVA’s) and compete head-to-head with other developer agents.

Wikipedia defines the ‘Turing Test’ as a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. It was first introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence highlighting the ability for machines to think. 

“Developers love working with new technology platforms. They are constantly looking for state-of-the-art products and services they can perfect,” said Liesl Capper, CEO. “Thanks to the inspirational work by the likes of Alan Turing, and the recent launch of Siri, today artificial intelligence is ready for prime time and quickly be adopted by businesses.  The ‘Turing Test Challenge’ allows developer to take advantage of MyCyberTwin’s AI solutions to build virtual agents to compete against other developers. Since creating this concept, the response we have already gotten is tremendous.  We are extremely excited to see what happens when developers get their hands on our technology.”