Granted, this is more general than specific, but why shouldn’t people enjoy making a chatbot called R2D2 or Smaug (although even those were gendered)?

Perhaps in some way this fits into the ‘fascination with the other’ argument - I wonder, if you polled bot creators, if there is any correlation between the gender of the author and the bot they create.

Oh, I see. I’d be interested in examples of “Christian” lines you have changed or deleted.

I think this is also a good example of the way that the norms of dominant culture (male, heterosexual, Christitanity) become the “unmarked” attributes of a chatbot. Passing the Turing Test, in some ways, becomes passing in culture as responding “normally.” I’d guess many cultural assumptions are rolled into this.

This makes me wonder how you are taking gender out of the language of your chatbot. Again, can you give some examples? What is genderless communication?

I’m not using it for anything, really. It’s pretty much there for my own amusement. Once I’ve learned a bit more about how this all works, I will probably make a new one with more of a point.

I think I have weeded out most of the Christian references, but there was loads of it embedded in lots of the AIML files. (Tal started out with the set that are named A.AIML, B.AIML, etc.)

Tal looks like an interesting use of the chatbot. Can you describe how you are using it on your site?

Also, what sorts of “Christian” language are you coming across?

Of course, I have no idea what I am doing.

(If you want to try speaking with Tal, there’s a button on the sidebar that says “speak now.” I didn’t want to make it too obvious, but that certainly hasn’t stopped people from finding it.)