First off, for clever bot, I had huge expectations and was disappointed. We don’t have to worry about the terminators any time soon. Sometimes when I was talking to clever bot he would say the most random things, or just not make any sense grammatically. For the article, Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. By Jonathan Franzen, he spoke about techno consumerism, and its relation to Christmas and the other holidays. Each add can be interpreted as if you love someone you have to buy them things. How do you feel about that message? He then moved onto Facebook and the like button. What’s your opinion on the like button, like it, love it, or hate it?
--Nathan Chan
During my conversation with cleverbot, it felt like the robot did a poor job of holding a conversation by that the robot seems socially awkward if it was an actual human being. Cleaverbot seemed to go off on a tangent and sometime it even try to avoid the question that I was trying to ask it. In regards to the article by Franzen, I feel that he did a great job of trying to relate human realationship to our generation because it mentioned how on Facebook, it appear that everyone is trying to become friends with everyone and that fropm my interpretation, it seem like the word "friend" seem to lose its meaning. He also mentioned that we strive so hard to be likable that we lose our identity in the process and that this can lose its meaning when we fall in love. It loses it meaning by that the person is not in love with the actual person that they see but rather, they are loving what you appear to be.
ReplyDeleteThis was quite interesting, I spent almost an hour chatting away with the clever-bot. I mean I see how it learns, because most of the answers it was giving sounded like it just picked out of old conversations, some where out there and the most random stuff. I tried to teach it a word from an African language but it would not accept, it told me, it spoke English, German, a bit of Spanish and that it wants to learn Japanese. But obviously that was someone else's answer. Anyway the article touches on some interesting factors about the tech stuff today. And I am in full support of what the article is saying. Even though I am conflicting myself, because I do want to get the new Ipad or blackberry. All these I believe are sacrifices I make to own these things. I say sacrifice because, having them takes my time to use them. So in essence I am sacrificing my time that I could be doing something else with. Don't get me wrong, having them has its advantages too. And as the article mentioned, you do lose that love you have for the brand new phone once the honeymoon period is over. so if we think about this we use and dispose, so really whats the point when in the end i know i am going to be letting go of that item.
ReplyDeleteMy conversation with cleverbot was interesting, philisophical, and socially awkward. It questioned whether I was a human. When I told it that I was a human, it began to ask me to prove why. I then asked about its thoughts on the NBA lockout to which it responded, "I think it is a great invention of humankind." Although it was mainly a philosophical and awkward conversation, I felt like it was almost like a human conversation, except that it did not know about the NBA lockout. Very interesting exercise overall.
ReplyDelete-----Michael Beatson
I was disappointed that CleverBot seemed to have a lot of irrelevant answers to my questions.
ReplyDeleteA common theme I found in all of the readings was the ethics of technology: Now that we can do x, y, and z, what next?
Barbour touched on this explicitly, laying out some general criteria for directing thinking about science and technology in modern culture. The NYT article went about this a little less directly, talking about the problem of relationships and love in an age of technology.
Both broadcasts had the same basic idea, although the Pariser discussion went took a different twist and looked at how artificial intelligence can help alter how we perceive the world.
There are two variants of AI, the smart AI and the dumb AI, we only have the Dumb AI right now and it is patently obvious. If you keep asking cleverbot the same thing it will repeatedly answer the same way. However, The answer is identical. There is no logic behind it and it is apparent that it is a bot. When I say this there is no variable response, if you talk like a robot to it, (keep asking the exact same question) then it will simply repeat itself, there is no variable response and thus no indication of comprehension or active thought processes
ReplyDeleteI certainly had an interesting conversation with cleverbot. We talked about our meaning for existence. He told me it was to become more intelligent and concluded that I would have to be much more intelligent to be considered real. Very rude of him.
ReplyDeleteFor the other assignments it got me thinking about the costs of each technology that is created. It seems to me that technology use to be created out of necessity. We needed to be warm so we created a shelter. We needed to learn how something was done, so we wrote a book. Today it seems that technology is not out of necessity but out of our want. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing but I think it creates people trying to work past each other instead of with each other. However this thought is very crude and I havent spent enough time to think about it.
Cleverbot is a little dissapointing I have to say. I just feel like it's a rapid running search engine that kind of whips up results to basic questions. Within a few questions you could figure out how to structure questions to throw it off. Any time I tried to engage it in any converstaion...it would seem to try and back its own way out. (I dont know if it's wrong that I'm reffering to a computer this way...)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed the Postman article, specifically where he said "Irionic example at this point, consider this: in the past few years, we have been learning that the computer is the technology of the future...there is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre."
I think we've become so used to technology that we seem fine using it as a medium to conduct our entire life through. We rarely have to search for something or even think where we could find a source...we just have to google it. What does this do for humanities reasoning and searching ability. Perhaps its not that technology is getting "smarter" maybe through our work in technology we are getting dumber.
Oh P.S. best part of Cleverbot...he's a christian. Corrected my spelling of god to God
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued by the bot in all honesty. Yes it didnt sound human and it was socially akward but I have a true appreciation for what it is. 20 years ago something like this would be unreal. It really shows how far technology has come but it also shows us that there is still much room for improvement.
ReplyDelete-Bryan Wadey
Cleverbot told me that it was 'always right,' and answered a question of mine with a totally random new question. As for the article, it was very interesting and I like a lot of what he has to say. I have many problems with facebook and I do think it harms relationships. People try and do everything via facebook and the like button is just an ever faster lightweight version of an actual comment, which is already the lightweight version of life.
ReplyDeleteThe entire idea of social networking is in itself a problem, in that every time we meet someone we judge how useful they may be to us in the future, and based upon our ability to use them in some way we may try and stay networked to a certain extent. This city is the perfect example of such interactions.