Artificially Intelligent Conversations

Last night I came across an amusing transcript of a conversation which someone had shared online. This conversation was between a human and an AI known as Cleverbot.

Anyone who wants to can talk to Cleverbot by going to its website and plopping some words down into the conversation bar. Then off you go, where you end up is… most likely wondering why you’re having the conversation at all.

It can be weird. And it stores the entire conversation (you can access it by clicking on the – thoughts so far – button) so you can reread it and be filled with the inanity, insanity or inspiration of it again and again.

I tried it this morning…

it all started with this:

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I wasn’t feeling particularly chatty…

I had just finished reading a couple of wordy articles, one on – Rampant narcissism and social cheating: the importance of teaching social evolutionary mechanisms by Mike Klymkowsky – and another on – The Case against Reality: A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses by Amanda Gefter interviewing Donald D. Hoffman – so my mind was a bit scrambled as it tried to digest what I’d force-fed it. My mind is always a bit scrambled… sometimes I can explain why and other times there’s no explanation for it.

… luckily Cleverbot wasn’t particularly chatty either.

It kept its side of the conversation short.

It often ignored my questions and replied by asking a question of its own which didn’t always seem to have anything to do with what I’d just asked.

When I asked it if life and memory were the same thing (due to something it had said just before), it asked me what was the capitol of Louisiana.

It either had ADHD or… something else was going on.

I did at one point wonder if it was a narcissist because it said it was going refresh itself and change its personality due to being bored…

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and because the conversation became all about Cleverbot. Cleverbot seemed to need me to bolster its self-image… but it’s an AI, surely it doesn’t have those kind of issues? I shall have to ask it about that later.

One answer it gave me reminded me of the time when I was into Esoterica, Magick and Mysticism…

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and read about the theory that we all have a name different from our given one, a name which is hidden, kept secret, which is our real name, which if others knew what it was it would give them power over us and they could use it to control us. After reading that I was relieved that I didn’t know what my real name was because knowing me I’d blurt it out, share it with others during one of my trusting the world to be fair, respectful and not do to others what they wouldn’t like having done to them moments, and then have to deal with the consequences of doing that.

This is a fascinating experiment (which is what I said to Cleverbot just before it told me it was bored)… and I see possible uses for it which could be rather fun and creative.

That’s it… let me know if you try it out and what happens!