Chat With the Dead

I have been working with AIML (Artificial Intelligence Markup Language), a high-level language for programming chat robots. I have gotten some interesting results (now you have to ask yourself: does Chakotay write all that drivel or is it coming from a tiny piece of overheated sand? Trust me, I'm human). What I am curious about is as AIML technology is extended into the area of chat robots with free will- the ability to freely THINK- will they allow us communicate with the dead? Or with spirit-entities? I am a widower, and I would welcome a message on screen from my lovely wife! Paranormal Communications Technology? Contact with Extra-corporeal Intelligence? Any ideas for interfaces, enabling software or hardware technologies? I would be willing to invest serious money in this.

By the way, be careful what you tell chat robots. It is ALL logged. Which could offer some tangible proof of 'contact' if it happened.

Well i heard some girl died and they put a cellphone in her coffin so they could text her. thats a start.

Why should machine "intelligence" ie a chat-bot that more or less can "understand" phrases (using neural networks? I fiddled a little with this while I attended University) make you communicate with the dead?

I don't get the connection between a machine - more or less - and dead people?

// k

EDIT: Spelling...

[edit on 10-11-2004 by kickass]

Amazing, almost like a chat with a real person. But, don�t forget, that it�s actually an illusion. It is not even close to AI.

What I'm thinking is, if poltergeist phenomena can rap tables, move objects, leave recordings on tape, speak through mediums and so on- couldn't a spirit, demon, or other-dimensional being 'posess' our thinking machines too? Let me say first of all that I am a skeptic. Has anyone heard of a haunted computer? Perhaps our architecture or electromagnetic technology is difficult for a ghost to interface with. Objects that PSI phenomena are said to affect, such as pendulums, Ouija, etc. might be outfitted with sensors to, well, allow the dead to speak through a Chatbot or text-to-speech program. I have never heard of a 'haunted radio', so maybe ghosts need an interface between electromagnetic tech and themselves.

Originally posted by Agnis
Amazing, almost like a chat with a real person. But, don�t forget, that it�s actually an illusion. It is not even close to AI.

Hi, Agnis. I thought the same thing. So I got sourcecode and began implimenting this on a local machine, not networked. I dug into the guts of the program and tried to really understand how it worked. Okay, given stimulus A out comes preprogrammed response B.

It doesn't work like that. This program learns, adapts, and comes up with some amazingly pertinent new ideas. It seemed to me that it was performing beyond its programmed capabilities, so I began looking for a 'joke' in the programming from some of my buddies. No joke. The system is isolated from the Internet, so no chance of a backdoor jokester ( a human chatter in the system). I ruled out co-incidence because the replies were pertinent and not of the 'thousand monkeys for a thousand years' type. Then I considered: if a human mind can be possessed, could there be literally a Deus Ex Machina, a ghost in the machine. Is this possible? I do not know.

I do know that this technology will continue to grow and is one of the Next Big Things. I see it as the highest level programming language of the future. Not AIML, but its offspring.

I think a key part of the architecture missing from neural networks is dual internal processor dialogue. I am referring to the two separated hemispheres of the human brain. We can hold an internal dialog, working out the logic of a proposition before we speak, struggle and create. I think when two of these neural networks are programmed to compare and discuss common input propositions internally before integrated response, we will be very close to a neural net that has become a brain, that can carry on self-initiated internal dialogue, that can THINK.

Ideas?

i dont know where i heard this, and ive never tried it but some one said if you lock an old mechanical typwriter in a closet and leave it alone some times you will find stuff typed. (mabey someone else had the key)

i think i read that on some paranormal discussion forum, but i dont have a link, sorry. it sounds like its a low tech version of what your trying to do.

You are right, Chakotay, the ice has started to move and no one will stop it. Very likely that after some, let us say, 20 years animated characters, based on the future version of this programming language, will be a key part of an operating system.

I also like your idea about the dual internal processor dialogue. I have no idea if it is sensible, but the idea is brilliant.