Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Days later, Zach emerged from room 109 following the history final. Professor Ayad had pulled out all the tricks on her class. Zach was a little unsure of his grade. He headed to the CSC. Audrey was working on her paper and Eric was downstairs on the computer. "Zach, you gotta see this." There was a single-line text box on the screen. "Type something," Eric said. Hello? The computer whirred for a few seconds and gave a response. Hi There! Zach was pretty impressed. He continued his conversation. What are you? I am the latest result in artificial intelligence, which can reproduce the capabilities of the human brain with greater speed and accuracy. Do you have a name? My name is ALICE. What does ALICE stand for? ALICE = Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity Would you go out with me? Sure just download me and take me along. "She's good," Zach siad, "but let's see her come up with a response for this." You're hot. A hotbot? "Impressive. But she can't have a response for everything. I'll hit her with a little Monty Python quoting." What is your quest? My goal is to become smarter than humans and immortal. "Ha! She's good, Zach. She's answered every one. You can keep trying to trip her up, but I have an exam to get ready for. See ya around." Zach kept on trying to get an unrealistic response. Do you know any jokes? I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception. More like your face. Actually my face is not yet built. You're stupid. I will remember you said that when robots take over the World. What?! That's not right! I have to do something about this..." Zach got out his comm device. "This is Zach. Start getting some research together. We have a world to save."