I chat, therefore I think?

Can robots initiate an interesting conversation, generate clever responses, and reveal deep thoughts? Can you discuss with them the meaning of life?

Artificial intelligence inventors worldwide have by now produced dozens of “chatbots” that anyone can talk to. Most of them rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Take ALICE – the Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity. Type a comment to it, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. Sadly, she’s unable to give a precise answer to a question whether she’s ever thought about changing her hair color. Maybe that’s because she doesn’t really think – even if she claims so. Still, she is a top-ranked, award winning (recently she won the 3rd place in Chatterbox Challenge 2007) bot, which makes ALICE worth talking to. So is Danogo, the Robot Psychic. Lots of people want to get a reading, ask questions and get advice from him. Unfortunately, Danogo won’t help you if you’re thinking about quitting your job. Asked for some advice, he changes the topic. Typically male attitude...

Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written, although Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. And those surprising questions he generates! Some bots really can produce intelligent-seeming conversations, which often resemble a discussion with an oriental philosopher. Chatting machines may be unable to think, but they can surely surprise you...