WRT: Writer Response Theory

Richard Wallace, of Alicebot, has posted about Nicholas S. Roy’s iGod chatbot again. It appears that it is still very popular, being the most popular on Pandorabots for the last few weeks. Richard says it may even be the most popular chatbot in the world right now. He receives about five emails everyday from […]

The web is swamped with advergames at the moment as they are the new holiday season card. One advergame that has come out recently is season agnostic but has topped my list of great gifts: Entertainment Anytime (I’m calling it Taxi). The advergame, created by Organic for US telco Sprint is in the ilk of […]

Interactor: How do you ask an Iraqi where the warlord is so you can meet with him to chat?
Iraqibot: Very politely.

“Tactical Iraqi,” W. Lewis Johnson’s language instruction program, offers soldiers the opportunity to learn Iraqi through interaction with characters through a video game-like interface. Johnson is current director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California.

According to Johnson, the response from Iraq War veterans has been outstanding to the effect of “I wish I had used that program BEFORE I went over there.” Their site reports, “Learners at Grafenwoehr who had previously been deployed to Iraq stated that they learned more Arabic in one day working with Tactical Iraqi than they learned in their entire tours of duty in Iraq.”

The system, as a teaching tool, is impressive. Dr. Johnson was polite (and generous) enough to share it with me on a recent visit to his lab in Marina Del Rey. The voice recognition was strong and the interaction compelling. (Nonetheless, I don???t think it will count as my military service.)A: Very carefully.

“Tactical Iraqi,” W. Lewis Johnson’s language instruction program, offers soldiers the opportunity to learn Iraqi through interaction with characters through a video game-like interface. Johnson is current director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California.

According to Johnson, the response from Iraq War veterans has been outstanding to the effect of “I wish I had used that program BEFORE I went over there.” Their site reports, “Learners at Grafenwoehr who had previously been deployed to Iraq stated that they learned more Arabic in one day working with Tactical Iraqi than they learned in their entire tours of duty in Iraq.”

The system, as a teaching tool, is impressive. Dr. Johnson was polite (and generous) enough to share it with me on a recent visit to his lab in Marina Del Rey. The voice recognition was strong and the interaction compelling. Nonetheless, I don???t think it will count as my military service.

The Legal Machines Project is trying to create artificial intelligence agents to aid the legal profession. This recently garnered media attention when a law firm announced it would be using such an agent to provide legal resources online next year.
Digital text aficionados may be familiar with the past work of project member Selmer Bringsjord, director […]

Toby is a commercial chatbot for YOMA (Your Online Marketing Agency) which both promotes the company and resells the idea of itself as an effective method of online marketing.
Toby’s interface is built on Oddcast’s ubiquitous SitePal technology, the same system used by Pandorabots. However the interesting thing about Toby is not the interface but the […]