Archive for the 'HAI' Category



Are the not-ready-for-prime-time Trip and Grace ready for their spot in the classroom? This semester, I have exposed a group of students in Advanced Composition in the Writing Program at USC to Fa硤e. The course has been investigating disciplinary boundaries with respect to writing and the use of various cultural objects in the development and application of those disciplines.

After a brief presentation on Fa硤e with the encouragement to go off and explore it on their home computers, I asked them to respond to the following questions:

  1. How would your discipline approach Facade?
  2. What theories might your discipline apply to its study?
  3. What use might Fa硤e serve in the classroom for your discipline?
  4. Can you imagine another version of Fa硤e that might better suit your discipline

The puppetpresident

“The puppetpresident” by Antoine Schmitt is a chatbot which purports to be a “HIGHLY PROTECTED PRIVATE CRYPTED CONVERSATION” with the puppetpresident itself.
WHY ARE YOU PRESIDENT?
> Oil programmed me for it
(Note the unusual use of the command prompt “>” to indicate the program response, not what is typed). The puppetpresident is written in AIML, via Pandorabots, […]

Hayles Talk

N. Katherine Hayles recently gave a talk about her new book, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, at HUMLab.
Mathematician Stephan Wolfram has recently proposed that many different kinds of complex systems, including human thought and action, can be modeled using cellular automata. These very simple computational systems have demonstrated that […]

The EGBG Telemarketing Counterscript is a conversational diagram (or script) for use by a person receiving a telemarketing call. It neatly turns the process of anonymous information collection around on the telemarketer, and in so doing performs a parody of the practice of scripting telephone market surveys.
EGBG is a ???research office??? founded by Martijn Englebregt […]

News from ARGN that an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), Jamie Kane, is currently being beta-tested. The game starts with the death of a popstar. The gameplay involves players interacting with characters through a forum, emails, phone and messenger. The character conversations through messenger are AI. I’ve signed up for the beta-test and have had a […]