Artificial chatting utility matching algorithmic nodes

[seanlevan]

Thanks for all the feedback! Unfortunately, I cannot respond to all of you because Hacker News has some kind of spam system set up that stops me from it.

[bt3]

For me, something would appear, then quickly disappear. Couldn't really tell if it was a response or a "loading" screen.

Nonetheless, I'm rather impressed coming from someone your age.

Edit: had some mild success asking about the weather. "You're asking what's the weather? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's ' face and withstand with courage'."

[seanlevan]

I just checked, and you're right, there was a modification in the code that I made that broke the bot just now. The bug is fixed now, so feel free to try it again. Thank you for testing and checking it out.

[builtinnya]

I asked "What is the answer to the Universe, Life, and everything?" and it replied "The answer to the universe, life, and everything is 42 (according to Douglas Adams' humorous science-fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)". It seems pretty smart :)

[seanlevan]

Thank you! I spent a lot of time on it so I love to hear things like that. :)

[lynchdt]

Nice job man, this is some great work for somebody your age. I know 'senior engineers' twice your age who couldn't write these notes, nevermind code it up.

http://acuman.us/about.txt

Are you sharing source?

[seanlevan]

For now it's closed source, but I'm considering making it open. :) For now, I don't want to, because I'm entering competitions in this field.

Thank you for your kind words.

[RIMR]

Eh, I'm not sure that I am using it right, but it hasn't given me a correct answer yet...

I have asked it complicated things like "What is largest unmanned artificial satellite", and "What is the combined population of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska".

I have also asked it simple questions like "Who was the fifth vice-president of the USA". It answered this one "interesting person".

It answers everything as "interesting". The only question it actually answered so far was "What is the population of the USA", which it incorrectly calculated as 32 Million.

Good work though, keep working the bugs out of it.

[seanlevan]

Thank you for the encouragement, and for pointing out the errors in it. :)

As you probably know, it's still a project in development and it took me a lot of time to even get it where it is.

It's still based more on conversational aspects; talking about the computer itself, but usually when it says "interesting", it knows the answer, it's just some bug that is preventing it.

[seanlevan]

Did you try "What is the largest unmanned artificial satellite" instead of "what is"? I know it's a glitch, but I'm thinking that it might fix the problem.

[lettergram]

It doesn't seem to respond to anything I ask...

"What's your name?"

"What color is the sky?"

"Who am I?"

"Why should I ask you questions?"

"Where is New York?

All I get is "gathering response" then nothing.

[seanlevan]

It can answer every single of those questions, but there was a glitch that broke it.

I just checked, and you're right, there was a modification in the code that I made that broke the bot just now.

The bug is fixed now, so feel free to try it again.

Thank you for testing and checking it out.

[vitamen]

"I'm glad that you like the counting crows, especially the old stuff, but some new stuff too how about me, though personally I don't like the counting crows, especially the old stuff, but some new stuff too how about me that much. I'm just not a fan of interesting."

I don't have any real constructive feedback, but the bot definitely does seem to have trouble parsing multi-thought sentences.

[seanlevan]

Thank you for the feedback, I haven't implemented any algorithm for parsing (splitting sentences between queries), but it's definitely on my to-do list. :)

[seanlevan]

Thank you, everybody!

In part from your testing and conversations with my bot, its reached over 3,500 questions asked. A mild milestone, I know, but I'm still happy about it.

[nosuchthing]

the two special unicode characters (F040, F070) arn't rendering (OSX 10.9, FF 36), and the chatbox doesn't seem active for me

[seanlevan]

What do you mean by doesn't seem active, are you referring to its cosmetic?

[cttet]

Do you gather information of the topics from the Internet or have a database storing somewhere?

[seanlevan]

A combination of both. :)

[bglazer]

Very impressive! I like the styling of the page. What languages are you using?

[seanlevan]

Thank you! I programmed the actual bot using PHP, using various algorithms as shown in its about page.

Regarding the styling, thank you! My favorite aspect of anything is web design.

[sweedy]

Nice one! I really enjoyed it. Works pretty good on Opera.

[seanlevan]

Thanks! Glad to hear it. I tried for cross-compatibility as much as possible.

[ycomb]

The wait is a bit annoying. But I like the answers.

Ha ha. Acuman knows Chappie.

[seanlevan]

Yes, I am aware of that, but it's hard to find a really good answer and research it and compare it with other answers using the internet without taking a while to load! Also, I'm dependent on free APIs.

He also knows simsimi and cleverbot.

[dmachop]

Able to submit questions in Chrome but not in Firefox.

[seanlevan]

That's odd, I don't happen to have Firefox with me, do you know what in the source code could cause that?

[rascalbrother]

Nothing seems to happen when I hit enter.

[seanlevan]

That's odd, I don't happen to have Firefox with me, do you know what in the source code could cause that?