AI Gone Bad
Off topic, but I found this article on Microsoft’s “foul-mouthed” Santa very amusing. Microsoft had a software project which would respond to instant messaging queries — part of its Windows Live Messenger Agent program, which allows software developers to create an “agent” which will respond to instant messages on Windows Live. Unfortunately this one wasn’t exactly “kid friendly.”
There are a number of ELIZA-style agents for the service, which uses user inputs to provide some ongoing dialogue with a user. Most are not truly artifical intelligence, but simply cleverly programmed software that doesn’t incorporate real AI techniques.
It’s somewhat amusing that all the computer 101 projects I was doing in high school (heck, before I was even in high school) seem to have cropped up as real, money making Internet services. (Who ever thought you could create something like eHarmony–essentially a souped up computer dating service–based on what has been around since the 60′s as a perennial computer science project?)
