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“I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions as such. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this is too soft, but I’m not completely sure. This seems okay to me. What is not to like about it? Yes, I think that this is how I like it, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is alright, but I’m not completely sure. I think that he is there. Why don’t you ask him? I think that he is breathing. Why don’t you ask him? Yes, I think that this is him, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is near, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is hard, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I think that this is cold, but I’m not completely sure. I suppose that it does. Yes I think that this heavy, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I always have to carry it far. I can’t really speak for them. Yes, I think that is where we get off, but I’m not completely sure. The red one, I think. We are just having a little chat.”
First 20 Questions
in Sunset Debris
by Ron Silliman
(all answered by A.L.I.C.E)
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A.L.I.C.E is a chatbot that simulates the experience of conversation, and it has won the Loebner Prize (2004) for the quality of its dialogue. Each year Hugh Loebner awards an annual prize of $2000 and a bronze medal to the digital program most able to mimic conversation with a human being. Each contestant competes with other entrants in a Turing Test, and the most convincing contestant wins the award, regardless of whether or not such software might constitute a perfect program. The patron of the award admits that, even though entrants in the early years of the prize are going to be primitive, their inadequacies provide incentives for others to enter the contest with improved variants, and he hopes eventually to award $100,000 and a gold medal to the first machine that can ape anthropic sentience. You can find an essay about the rationale for such an award at this site.
The New Athenians have argued on behalf of “conversation” without considering the degree to which our own dialogue in the modern milieu has become completely transected by dialogue with machines themselves, whether they be automated operators on telephones or simulated opponents in videogames—and advances in computerized intelligence are only going to make these facsimiles more and more difficult to distinguish from actual people, until eventually we might not care to make the distinction when we interact through our media. While we might take solace in our own anthropic prejudice, dismissing the nonsensical communiqués of such chatbots as nothing more than computerized gobbledygook, we might unwittingly miss a chance to study firsthand the babytalk of an embryonic sentience, struggling abortively to awaken from its own phylum of oblivion.
I believe that, at the very least, such machines offer a powerful appliance for generating poetry that might have its own unique styles of expression (as suggested, for example, by my whimsical theatrics, pairing off A.L.I.C.E with Ron Silliman in a “conversation” that begins to take on some of the repetitive resonances of Gertrude Stein—a writer only one remove from another “Alice” in the biography of avant-garde practice). I might suggest that, as the advancing, aesthetic potential of our machines begins increasingly to discredit the romantic paradigm of inspiration, poets of the future might have to take refuge in a new set of aesthetic metaphors for the unconscious, adapting by adopting a machinic attitude, placing the mind on autopilot in order to follow a remote-controlled navigation-system of mechanical, conceptual procedures—be they automatic, aleatoric, or mannerist, in their theories….
Who are the New Athenians again? Do we have a list of some of their members, blogrolls, etc.? Or is this is a movement of just an unknown handful as of now? I’m genuinely curious.
Christian,
Have you ever heard of Kathy McGinty? It’s a bunch of samples that were created to interact with phone sex callers. Callers call the line, ask questions and “Kathy” responds. You can hear an x-rated (NSW!) MP3 here:
http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/BT/Kathy_McGinty.mp3
I’d love to hear “Kathy’s” response to Silliman!
Kenny
Thanks for the post and the link, Christian. That was fun. And no less awkward than many of the human/human interactions one experiences. She even made me laugh. I posted our conversation for the record.
SQ
If anything, I think the example of A.L.I.C.E. justifies the agenda of The New Athenians. If you’re aim is take poetry down digital avenue, then fine. But wouldn’t this, in some profound ways, preclude our own human ability to create meaningful conversations? How we converse with our machines and vice versa is interesting, sure, but this completely misses the point of The New Athenian project. Humanity is central. By using the example of A.L.I.C.E., you’re only reminding us more of what we’re truly missing. By digitally mimicking the “experience of conversation”, A.L.I.C.E. only reminds us that we don’t need her at all, that we can in fact do what she does all on our own.
Software is not for you. After you “launch” it, it does things you’ve asked for.
Ever heard of PERL”?”
Leave the philosophy to the pros.
Personally I think the New Athenian Movement is spot on. I’d like to not be sitting at my computer right now or sending text messages however the digital world has its advantages and I think the New Athenians should consider this although I agree with their opinion that is has caused a fragmented society… but I am glad that I can send an email to my grandmother in New Zealand and she can receive it that day, instead of sending it airmail or having it go on a boat and take weeks!
Wow! I did this same thing with Rae Armantrout and A.L.I.C.E. on my blog, Joe Brainard’s Pyjamas, several months before this appeared online. In fact, I have several conversations and collaborations with A.L.I.C.E. in my forthcoming book, _Okay, But I’m Gonna Burn Down the Building_ (Six Gallery Press, 2007).