CS 23  Expert Systems and Chatbots

Fall 2006

Meet Truman, the socialbot.

Write in Tom Riddle's diary.

Chat with Alice

Robotics, chatbots, expert systems, and AI are the wave of the near future. Enroll in CS 22 and/or CS 23 now and be ahead of the curve in acquiring the job skills you will need in the technological revolution that is beginning now.

This course introduces expert systems. An expert system mimics the thought processes of an expert who gives advice on some narrow topic such as oil exploration, disease diagnosis, or computer design. A chatbot or virtual person, in many ways an embodiment of Alan Turing's vision of a thinking machine, is an expert system that converses much like people. A chatbot with an animated character, personality, facial expressions, and lip-synced speech, provides a more natural interface to websites and the computer. Students will build one or more chatbots.

Announcements

Date Posted Topics Announcement
12/12/2006 Spring 2007 CS 23 will next be offered in Spring 2007 as an 8-week hybrid (part on-ground and part online) class beginning on April 18th, 2007 (late start). Please enroll right away so the class makes (does not get cancelled). Building a chatbot is more art than science and is a lot of fun.

Who can take this course

The official prerequisite is CS 3. But CIS 1 or equivalent knowledge will suffice. I.e., you must know how to use a PC with a Windows operating system, and have basic computer literacy. Other than that, the course is open to anyone. Artificial Intelligence (AI) courses are usually placed in the Computer Science department of universities, but they are interdisciplinary - art, biology, cognitive psychology, linguistics, physics, etc. So, anyone can take this course and find it useful and relevant, the only requirement being basic computer user skills.

Which kind of chatbot will you build?

There are many free chatbot development tools available. Please see the References page for links. We will try to have the following available in the lab (B231):

  1. Verbot 4.0 Standard Edition from Conversive, Inc. in nearby Malibu, CA. Crystal, the bannerbot above on the left, is from Conversive.
  2. The A. L. I. C. E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation is a great source for chatbot tools. Alice is ten years old and extremely popular. Chat with Alice now. Tom Riddle's diary was cleverly created using ALICE tools.
  3. Socialbot by Dario Nardi of UCLA. Given that Dr. Rogler's CS 22, Introduction to Mobile Robots course uses the ER-1 robot and that socialbot integrates with the ER-1, you may prefer this one. Be sure to see the fascinating video about Truman, the socialbot, on the socialbot website.
  4. The Yapanda engine - fully explained in our textbook by Peter Plantec. Here is the book's companion website Virtual Humans by Peter Plantec.

Expert Systems

Check out OpenCyc.

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