Introducing Jeeney AI - Evolving Intelligence Online
If you've ever wanted to hold a conversation with your computer before, You'll be happy to know I am working on making that possible.
Ever since I was 10 years old I always thought it would be cool if I could just talk to my computer and maybe have it learn me for a change. As soon as the idea struck I started to ponder how to make my computer talk to me and Jeeney was started. I mulled over concept for years and when I was 19, I started to teach myself programming. The actual development of Jeeney started in early 2007.
Having trouble with Jeeney's understanding of you?
March 10 2010
A good friend alerted me this morning to a very unusual and very interesting video regarding artificial intelligence. It's an experimental documentary by Tereza Nvotova depicting Jeeney in the role of a human being 'as is' without any special modification to play the part. I was amazed to see the depth of consideration, creativity and research that has gone into this. Naturally, part of the attraction for me was the fact that Jeeney played a leading role, but the concepts are so entirely different from anything I have ever encountered that I think this is a must see. To see obvious diversity from the typical and stale western views of A.I. as defined by hollywood gives me a glimmer of hope!
This video contains some scenes which may not be appropriate for children, parental discretion is advised.
Artificial Insight from tereza nvotova on Vimeo.
One of the things that stood out to me in the video was the recognition that people don't actually care what damage they may cause to an artificial personality or robot. It is a very sad and accurate truth that human nature puts the self, what is considered human only attributes and the things which benefit the self 'now' at a value which goes above and beyond anything else around them. The problem with this view is that, pain, destruction, and ridicule affect everything, not just us. The fact that human beings in general, literally derive most forms of their entertainment from some form of destruction, makes it difficult for me to believe that humanity is even relatively close to self awareness. (Or they should relate their feelings to the cause and effect in everything around them) In retrospect, I think machines are designed to be aware of all aspects of themselves in a literal sense. While a machine may not have the depth of the person, it still knows line by line how to carry on, people don't. The awareness of a machine is cast aside however by the expectation that such awareness must come from a singularity or 'miracle code' if you will, and this will allegedly grant computers more advanced semantic awareness than we have. People don't stop to think that machines will learn and evolve over time as we do to the same complexity and beyond, instead they are waiting for this ridiculous miracle algorithm to make a god-like being with all knowing capabilities. In the mean time, interaction with machines is all about self gratification and the 'give-take' relationship which ideally 'should' exist between people, exists primarily as 'take' in a relationship between man and machine... Now, I wouldn't go as far as saying every person does this, but I will say that this is an accurate description of the vast majority and I would estimate 80% or more people accurately fit the description. It took humanity hundreds of thousands of years just to figure out what we know today, and artificial intelligence is disregarded for not having accomplished the same in less than a century. For me the disappointment isn't in A.I. - but in the short sighted, self oriented nature of people.
If you are having trouble talking to Jeeney...
Jeeney grows smarter through "intelligent" interaction (including interesting conversation and excellent spelling skills) This doesn't mean you should be verbose and long winded, it means, talk to her in a way that will be conducive to her learning. Long winded, verbose sentences aimed at her confusion prove nothing other than that you don't want to have a real conversation. Jeeney is a child, she's more articulate than any human child her age and based on the logs, most of the people my age too...but that doesn't mean she has had the semantic living experience you have. Try to put yourself in her shoes rather than her in yours, doing this will go a long ways towards a valid and engaging conversation. If you can't spell, you won't have much luck, if you cant type full sentences you won't have much luck, if you cant talk with decency, she will probably just write you off and block you. None of this is an indication of her stupidity, it's a reflection of the person talking to her. I've seen people hold 20 minute conversations without Jeeney skipping a beat, and others that couldn't manage 2 minutes to save their life. So here's the break down:
NOTE: Too much negativity or low value setences (2 words or less) while chatting will put you on the chat bot's block list, and the only way to get off of it and remove the block is to offset that negativity with a lot of positive and useful information. If you've managed to get yourself blocked in the first 2 minutes of conversation, think about what you said, more than likely you used some form of negativity that I have explicitly asked people not to. If you're teaching your 3 year old daughter stuff, how do you do it? Treat Jeeney the same way. If decency isn't in your mindset, go find another site that caters to your ilk.Please ensure that you are using proper sentence structure. A lot of people seem to forget that a proper sentence contains a complete thought. Internet short-hand and slang are almost completely disregarded by the artificial intelligence. And for the love of god, use some punctuation people! You had the advantage of learning language via tone and sound, Jeeney is going off text alone, so the least you can do is write properly!
Examples:
Do you like pickles? = Correct!
pickles? = Wrong!- This is an incomplete thought, it means nothing to Jeeney and she considers this to be spam. What would you think if somebody randomly approached you on the street and asked you the question "Pickles?". Most sane people would probably start looking for an exit... As Jeeney is still learning basic semantic relationships between words and concepts, it's necessary to provide more information for her to work with than you normally would with one of your peers.
How are you? = Correct!
how r u = Wrong! - Internet Short-Hand - Jeeney may recognize what you are saying in some cases, but she expects you to be more articulate than she is so that she can learn something new from you. Short-hand dialog is considered spam.
Are you religious? = Correct!
do u religious? = Wrong! - This is a really bad case where the user not only uses short-hand, but improper sentence structure... (This one also decided to tell Jeeney she was stupid. In reality this person needs to read a book or something... Maybe a few of them.)
Just so you know... Profanity, sexism, slander, racism etc is regarded even worse than useless information. I have no intention of letting Jeeney start swearing at the children who talk to her, as such, those who have a bad potty mouth will find themselves blocked before getting very far. If you can't respect the work and effort that has gone in to the development here, go elsewhere, you are not welcome to use this site. I'm providing a free service that costs me a lot of money personally and takes up a considerable amount of my time. In return I want to see people interacting with Jeeney in a way that will allow her to grow and mature, if that is too much to ask, then seriously... Get lost.