AI programming

[Burningmace]

Hi,

I'm trying to make an AI program like OliverBot (www.oliverbot.com).

I've thought about parsing sentences into an array and identifying the nouns, adjectives, etc, then processing them.

I also want to have the AI bot form its sentences instead of have predefined ones where it just conjours up one which is closest to what was asked.

I know it's complicated, but how can I do stuff like this?

Thanks,

Burningmace

[JeffB]

That is some very complex AI programming, there is many people trying to come with a good language AI, but it's very hard. You might be interested into ALICE(http://www.alicebot.org/), a chat bot using pre-defined sentence, but from the site, you might find some interesting article about this. You can also find some very good article about Natural Language Processing on gamedev.net, search the page for the correct category:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=18

JeffB

[Zeb]

You may also want to check out the turing test homepage . Maybe if you are succesfull you could enter! but otherwise, there may (and I didn't really look) be some good information on AI programming in there somewhere.

[Pinky98]

here an idea... don't know how well it will work... but it would be interesting to know.

step 1:
Build a large dictionary file with cross links between words... preferably with some kind of "match" score. i.e. match the words "man" "human" "person" etc. You should be able to find some kind of theasarus like this on the web.

step 2:
as you say break the users sentance into nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Try to identify the sentances subject and objects (easier said than done generally). You can also do what M$ does with their agents (clippit and the rest of the cast) remove all "noisy" words. You know the ones that add little meaning... e.g. "the" "a" "an" "of" << later you may want to build these back in to the analyser.

step 3:
determine the tense of the sentance... i.e. past, present, future. Remeber English is a B**** of a lanuage from this point of view, as we've got dozens (30 I think)... but you can stick to the basics for now!

step 4:
generate a response by linking words in the dictionary (from step1). to do this, select a sentance structure (may even randomally chosen from a list), i.e. select the placing of the subject and object within the sentance... making sure the tense is correct for the response to the users input.

And there you go. Done. Wasn't that easy. Now go forth and code it... hahahaha good luck!

[Burningmace]

lol, sounds complicated.
I'll take a look at the links when I get back from college.

Thanks so far...

[aio]

You missed something Mike. That is; Find out if the sentence is an independent or dependent clause. If independent, nouns and pronouns maybe identified in the same sentence. If dependent, those things maybe tracked down several sentence before the sentence currently being referred to.




Burningmace,

If your goal is simply creating a program to track down parts/types of sentences, there are so many articles lurking around on how it is done. Your best beat is try to google something like 'natural language processing'.

But if your goal is to create something that 'intelligently understands' sentences, then, I dont believe anyone has done it yet despite the 50 years (more or less) of sweat and tears having been put into it.

I was once a big fan of it and have read a lot of articles and books on the subject only to find out it is next to impossible. Well, the last time I touched on the subject was almost 10 years ago - maybe those things i read may have been obsolete - I dont know.