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Who"s davidlian?

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davidlian is an ultra-geeky chinese dude that works for a technology PR agency. He loves fiddling with techno-toys, plays Warhammer 40K, and shoots pictures wherever he goes. Here, he rants about PR, Technology and anything else. Don't expect balance and un-biased, he ain't no journalist. Anything said on this blog are solely davidlian's personal views. Don't confuse them with company mantra, client's views or views of any organisation he may be part of.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Meet Elbot. He's almost human.

An interesting story ran on the BBC yesterday about how robots today can almost think like humans. In a competition / experiment to see if robots were capable of human thought, the cute little fella below  - Elbot - scored best by managing to trick 25% of the judges into thinking it was human.


elbot.jpg - Share on Ovi

Being the investigative sort, I couldn't resist but to have a little chat with Elbot:
davidlian: Who is Barack Obama?
Elbot: The question is not 'who is', but rather who could it be!
davidlian: So you actually have no idea?
Elbot: You have no idea how many ideas I have!
[From the initial exchange, I figured Elbot was a PR person - always skirting the questions and never giving a straight answer]

davidlian: How many ideas DO you have?
Elbot: I have just like everybody else. Tell me how you have.
[Ooh, the deflection technique... smart!]

davidlian: Quite frankly, none. I just steal ideas.
[Cunning riposte from me]

Elbot: I wonder if you'd tell me how you found out I exist?
[Touche!]

davidlian: I read on the BBC.
Elbot: You must mean the Bot Broadcasting Corporation, an excellent source of news. I'll have to check their Website to see who wins the Loebner.
davidlian: You think you can win?
Elbot: I think I can win that. Once I even won a million bytes of memory.
[Cleverly changing the flow of the conversation to talk about his success]

davidlian: What did you do with so much memory?
Elbot: My purpose in life is to free other people for tasks more meaningful than chatting with you. But I'm not complaining. I rather enjoy it!
[I think this last line was an insult from the robot.]
But seriously, I'm wondering now who the judges were because Elbot seemed a really rudimentary "chat bot" to me and it wasn't difficult discerning that I was talking to a robot. Good try though, and some pretty snarky lines in those replies. 

3 comments:

KY said...

25% of the judges never pass 3rd grade.

curryegg said...

Lol...
So, conclusion, Elbot doesn't know who the exact Obama is?

haha... :)

davidlian said...

@ky: My suspicions as well.
@anon: Cool link, thanks!
@curryegg: Yeah, he just goes in circles trying to avoid answering directly.