ACUMAN

AI

chatterbot

SHOW HN2015

Legend

ACUMAN

I'm a 14 year-old dev who has programmed an artificial intelligence bot

acuman.us

#chatterbot#natural language processing#machine learning#sentiment analysis

430points
297comments
#25of 2,565 in 2015
Top 1%of 2015 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

46 positive, 55 neutral or asking, 14 mixed, 54 critical, out of 169 comments about the project. Thread score -0.04.

Execution: 3 for, 41 againstIdea: 7 for, 4 againstPerformance: 5 for, 2 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 4 againstDesign: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Impressive work for a young developer

    From 3 comments
    • This guy rocks. Sean Le Van: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyACnFsNm4 Bio "Sean Le Van is 13. He has given many professional concerts since the age of five years old, along…
      joaorico on HN
    • Whenever I find one of these AI chat programs, I like to start by typing in "this sentence is false", and yours gave me the most unique response (after quite some time…
      primitivesuave on HN
    • Good to see young programmers exercising their chops. I am having trouble getting it to work in FireFox on Ubuntu. Chrome seems OK. Keep it going!
      danbmil99 on HN

Objections

  • Closed source, so the code cannot be inspected

    From 2 comments
    • Question: "Where have all the flowers gone?" Wolfram Answer: "Girls have picked them every one. (according to the 1960s folk song by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson) Acuman Answer:…
      ins0 on HN
    • Where is the source?
      dvh on HN
  • Responses are often negative or nonsensical, e.g. grammar errors and odd answers

    From 3 comments
    • Good job. Most of the response starts with negation, why is that? for example: Me: I am fine. Bot: You don't seem fine to me. Or Me: I am fine, sir. Bot: I am not fine, sir, but…
      mkagenius on HN
    • It's an impressive achievement, but I've been around a long time and seen lots of those. It's even more impressive given the age of the dev, and I hope he gets the chance to…
      ColinWright on HN
    • > I actually do not think japan is a very nice country. By the way, I've heard that Japan is a very nice country. Most of the "conversation" was about this level.
      j_lev on HN
  • Does not work in Firefox

    From 2 comments
    • Good to see young programmers exercising their chops. I am having trouble getting it to work in FireFox on Ubuntu. Chrome seems OK. Keep it going!
      danbmil99 on HN
    • Excited to give this a try but it doesn't seem to work in FireFox?
      marcinbejm on HN
  • Collects personal information and psychometric profiles

    From 2 comments
    • The bot seemed to be mining personal information from me. If you think about it, people are voluntarily disclosing all things about themselves which can be stored and sold on.
      leke on HN
    • I got a little scarred when it asks me about hobbies and where I live. This can easily be a "market research" strategy.
      zk00006 on HN

Requests

  • Make it work in Firefox

    From 2 comments
    • Good to see young programmers exercising their chops. I am having trouble getting it to work in FireFox on Ubuntu. Chrome seems OK. Keep it going!
      danbmil99 on HN
    • Excited to give this a try but it doesn't seem to work in FireFox?
      marcinbejm on HN
  • Release the source code

    From 1 comment

Questions

  • Is it built on IBM Watson or other APIs?

    From 1 comment
    • If you look at the source its using something called blekko.php - which upon googling heads to a "IBM Watson purchased this". Is this using watson behind the scenes?
      namidark on HN
  • Why does it respond with negation so often?

    From 2 comments
    • Good job. Most of the response starts with negation, why is that? for example: Me: I am fine. Bot: You don't seem fine to me. Or Me: I am fine, sir. Bot: I am not fine, sir, but…
      mkagenius on HN
    • Well done! In nearly all of my exchanges with ACUMAN, the bot responds in the negative. I assert something, and ACUMAN simply disagrees, which prevents any requirement for…
      jmilloy on HN

Alternatives named

  • ALICE chatbot

    From 1 comment
    • As I've replied to other people: No AIML. My bot uses its own markup language custom-made to its needs that I call ACUMANSCRIPT. What makes it special is the backend, which is…
      seanlevan on HN
  • Eliza

    From 2 comments
    • It's an impressive achievement, but I've been around a long time and seen lots of those. It's even more impressive given the age of the dev, and I hope he gets the chance to…
      ColinWright on HN
    • "What do you think of Eliza?"
      Stratoscope on HN
  • FreeHAL

    From 1 comment
    • I have indeed heard about FreeHAL. It won "Most Popular" (in the past) in the same contest in which my bot most recently was awarded "Best New Bot". FreeHAL is now discontinued,…
      seanlevan on HN
  • Siri

    From 1 comment
    • I don't get what's new about any of this. I disclosed in this thread in other answers already the APIs I use, I have yet to know any "intelligent" piece of artificial…
      seanlevan on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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