The return of (virtual) Shadow

The late Shadow

Chapter 5 of Peter Norvig's excellent "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp" is entitled "ELIZA: Dialog with a Machine". I have spent the afternoon studying his pattern-matching code and transferring it into an executable Lisp file.*

An example of an Eliza pattern is this:

'((?* ?P) need (?* ?X))

which picks up text before and after the word 'need'.

If you tell Eliza:

'(Shadow and I need a vacation),

the program will match the input with the pattern above, thus ..

(pat-match '((?* ?P) need (?* ?X)) '(Shadow and I need a vacation))

to create a binding

'((?P SHADOW AND I) (?X A VACATION))       ;   (dotted pair) binding

which can then be passed to the output-generating pattern. And so on.

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But we're not so much interested in Eliza and that Rogerian psychoanalyst. We want Shadow, our much-missed departed cat (RIP July 1st 2016).

The first step is to change the rules: less talk of vacations and how you're feeling about your parents, more about voles. And being sick on the carpet.

The Eliza architecture was criticised, correctly, for being totally vacuous. The emptiness of the 'conversation' led to bored withdrawal after a period depending upon the narcissism of the user.

We can do better.

To add intelligence to Shadow (such a bright cat!) we have to give him knowledge (in the knowledge lies the power) together with reasoning capability.

Peter Norvig helpfully gives us an equation (chapter 16, p. 548 or thereabouts):

Expert System = Prolog + uncertainty + caching + questions + explanations

The Prolog part powers the knowledge-base capturing Shadow's deep understanding of his own likes, light-hearted escapades and more lethal habits; the Q&A allows for his more sensitive, introspective side.

Peter Norvig has a detailed chapter (11 - Logic Programming) where he explains how to implement Prolog in Lisp (interpreted).

I think this is the way to go with chatbots: combine Eliza-style interaction with a little knowledge-based reasoning to add interest and depth, and to steer the conversation. Perhaps a semantic grammar in there somewhere to help extract meaning from the user's input, though personally, given the ungrammaticality of dialogue, I've always put semantics/pragmatics first.

Anyway, watch this space. It won't be quick .. but we will bring him back!

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* We spent the morning strolling in the sun around Cheddar reservoir.