18-10-2010, 02:57 PM
Chatbot
Abstract:
A chatbot (or chatterbot, or chat bot) is a computer program designed to simulate an intelligent conversation with one or more human users via auditory or textual methods. Traditionally, the aim of such simulation has been to fool the user into thinking that the program's output has been produced by a human.
Programs playing this role are sometimes referred to as Artificial Conversational Entities, talk bots or chatterboxes. More recently, however, chatbot-like methods have been used for practical purposes such as online help, personalised service, or information acquisition, in which case the program is functioning as a type of conversational agent.
What distinguishes a chatbot from more sophisticated natural language processing systems is the simplicity of the algorithms used. Although many chatbots do appear to interpret human input intelligently when generating their responses, many simply scan for keywords within the input and pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a textual database.
Present situation:
One pertinent field of AI research is natural language processing. Usually, weak AI fields employ specialized software or programming languages created specifically for the narrow function required. For example, A.L.I.C.E. utilises a programming language called AIML which is specific to its function as a conversational agent, and has since been adopted by various other developers of, so called, Alicebots. Nevertheless, A.L.I.C.E. is still purely based on pattern matching techniques without any reasoning capabilities, the same technique ELIZA was using back in 1966. This is not strong AI, which would require sapience and logical reasoning abilities.
Jabberwacky learns new responses and context based on real-time user interactions, rather than being driven from a static database. Some more recent chatterbots also combine real-time learning with evolutionary algorithms which optimise their ability to communicate based on each conversation held, with one notable example being Kyle, winner of the 2009 Leodis AI Award.[citation needed] Still, there is currently no general purpose conversational artificial intelligence, and some software developers focus on the practical aspect, information retrieval.
Automated conversational systems have now progressed, and large companies such as Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Renault and Citroën are already using them instead of call centers to provide a first point of contact. Chatbots can also be implemented via Twitter, or Windows Live Messenger (see World of Alice).
Popular online portals like eBay and PayPal are also using multi lingual virtual agents to offer online support to their customers. For example, PayPal uses chatterbot Louise to handle queries in English and chatterbot Léa to handle queries in French. Developed by VirtuOz, both agents handle 400,000 conversations in a month.These agent have been functional since September 2008 on PayPal websites.
Proposed work:
We want to provide the chatbot with following abilities.:
1) Understanding marathi.
2) Acoustic coversation.
3) New learning.
4) Agricultural database.
