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

430 points by seanlevan 11y ago

panic 11y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139766
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I had indeed posted it previously. I am reposting it because it has been changed significantly since then in almost every respect, both algorithmically and in the concept.
  - zaroth 11y ago
    See, that's what you get for giving Acumen your HN login credentials.
    - qznc 11y ago
      "What is your account on Hacker News?" "What is my account on hacker news? I don't actually have a account on hacker news, as a computer machine." Acuman denies.
  - castell 11y ago
    > it has been changed significantly since then in almost every respect, both algorithmically and in the concept. Does the about page reflect the "old" or the "new" concept? ( http://acuman.us/about.txt http://acuman.us/about.txt ) Can you describe the ACUMANSCRIPT? Is it similar to Prolog or Lisp? Fuzzy string match is this something like Soundex/Double Metaphone? Do you use a knowledge base or ontology (Freebase, Wikidata, etc.)? What programming language is it written (beside your script lang), Node.js/Go/Python/C++ ?
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      Thank you for expressing interest and checking out ACUMAN. The "about page" reflects the "old" concept, as stated on this new page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php The syntax of the ACUMANSCRIPT markup language is actually more similar to XML (or, in the AI field, AIML) due to its rigid structure. It's fundamentally based on pattern matching akin to regex. However, the backend processing which alters ACUMANSCRIPT and processes the individual data is what makes it unique. The knowledge base used for the Named-entity recognition for the processing of ACUMANSCRIPT is Wikimedia and WolframAlpha, used in conjunction. It is all processed in the backend using PHP.
danbmil99 11y ago
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!
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for the encouragement, and for checking it out. It is a known bug that it has trouble working in Firefox, and I am currently working on making it cross-compatible.
  - danieloaks 11y ago
    Hey, I've done a little writeup on why it doesn't work properly under Firefox (and some other little issues I ran into), and the fixes so that it should work all fine. Got it here, if you'd like to have a look: http://pastebin.com/eZR2TSrC http://pastebin.com/eZR2TSrC
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      Thank you for the code you offered, and I will implement it right away. There are so many different things to debug, I kept post-posting this one. I like how you binded the events instead of calling them inline. It's also a much better coding practice.
    - ia 11y ago
      this is what i love about the internet. you're a great person. i also thank you on sean's behalf :)
deleted 11y ago
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alinseba 11y ago
Nice work
primitivesuave 11y ago
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 calculating): "It seems to be, and it's actually a string of words satisfying the grammatical rules of a language." On a side note - I work in tech education, and I have to say that the software projects that motivated people of your age are creating is astonishing. Keep it up!
- vixen99 11y ago
  Pedantic if you like but as with 'pregnant', you can't qualify 'unique'. You either are or you're not.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique. Unlike pregnant which is a binary (are/are not), unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium. Even the dictionary, in one of the terms for unique, gives a meaning that's not "unique" in a binary way at all: "not typical; unusual". If it wasn't a continuum we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" used above (like we don't have for pregnancy). And they are not mere errors (like using your instead of you're etc.), they are used to express this notion, that something can be "different" than all other things in different deegres.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
      > Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique. Pedantic, but you can't. Unique is not a gradable adjective. This is not just my opinion : http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most-unique-opportunity/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most... http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/adjectives-gradable-non-gradable http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/... https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non.htm https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non.... > we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" I wouldn't normally bring this up, but while we're being pedantic, there are lots of reasonably common expressions that exhibit gratingly poor grammar or sematics. You have quoted two of them above. > unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium. Ah no. Unique means "one of a kind", not merely "differing". "uni" as a prefix means one, e.g unicycle, universe, unitard. "one of a kind"-ness is not continuous! As per the second link, "unique" already contains the idea of "very different".
marcinbejm 11y ago
Excited to give this a try but it doesn't seem to work in FireFox?
- tempestn 11y ago
  Yes, not working for me either in FF 37.0.1.
  - teekert 11y ago
    Neither for me, enter does not do anything.
  - vacri 11y ago
    In Chrome: "I'm a bit bummed that you're broken in Firefox" Answer: "I do not consider myself as broken on firefox, but to each his own. Though I respect your opinion." I guess we should note that an AI that can converse isn't necessarily correct, even about objective topics.
NeutronBoy 11y ago
Plot twist: The 14-year-old dev is actually itself an AI bot. On a serious note, this is a super cool project!
josephagoss 11y ago
Very nice, I like it. Any chance you can offer some insights into how it works?
anigbrowl 11y ago
It feels a bit Markov-chainy, but I'm quite impressed overall. Better than many other chatbots I have used, to the point that I was able to have an argument with it. Good work so far!
vmarsy 11y ago
Very impressive, at your age I was still 4 years ago from my C Hello world! Putting altogether an AI, and a webpage is even more impressive. it asked me the same question multiple times sometimes, I was disappointed by this reply: I'm glad that you like good food!, though personally I don't like good food! that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Food Records. I guess it make sense for a bot :) (I see the exclamation point was kept in the bot reply) Would you mind sharing what languages/framework you used here?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for expressing interest and for testing out ACUMAN. There is some more information available on this following page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
wickawic 11y ago
"What do you think about the situation in the Middle East?" "on the situation in the middle east? Just fantastic, what is there not to like about the cardinal compass point that is at 90 degrees."
- grandalf 11y ago
  Wow it actually has a sense of humor :)
  - thrownawayadv 11y ago
    For some values of "humor". (Just don't ask it to tell you a joke.)
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      What is wrong with his jokes? I have tried asking him a few and his responses are quite funny.
DigitalSea 11y ago
This is all the motivation that I needed to stop procrastinating. When I was 14 I was riding my BMX, leeching off my parents and playing Smoke On The Water on my guitar (on one string) repeatedly driving my parents nuts. Congratulations on this, looks and works great. Impressive job and keep it up, you're going to make a great dev by the time you enter the workforce.
- danieldk 11y ago
  There is nothing wrong with riding a BMX, leeching off your parents, and playing Smoke On The Water on one string, when you are 14 :). At that age, you should have fun and experiment. Whether that's playing on a one string guitar, pretending you are in a rock band, or programming an AI bot. Just have fun, you'll have time to worry about your mortgage, career, and children later.
deleted 11y ago
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rplnt 11y ago
Is it down already? At least I don't get any response. edit: seems to be working now
johnnyboyy12 11y ago
Heads up: typing "define" seems to crash it
- stringcleansing 11y ago
  it may be crashed from a lack of input cleansing
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Thanks for checking it out. I assure you that's not the problem. :) I was tampering with a source code, and simply incorrect PHP syntax (a missing bracket) broke it for a few minutes.
    - jeffhuys 11y ago
      Live editing?! Oh man...
  - siberianbear 11y ago
    yeah, there do seem to be some sort of input-cleansing bugs. I used some quotes in one of my answers and got this back as part of the response: It's In[1]:= Speak[youve].
HeavenFox 11y ago
"i am in love with a girl" "You don't seem in love with a girl to me." I gotta admit, an AI just broke my heart :( [edit] Acuman: "Btw, what do you do for a living" Me: "Software engineering" Acuman: "Maybe they are engineering to you, but not to me. We differ in that respect." Aw man, why would you break my heart twice in a row...
chrisjohn93 11y ago
What do you thing about the situation of Middle east.
findjashua 11y ago
me: I'm always amazed by the ability of professional women to walk gracefully in heels bot: My personality leans towards masculinity, though I am a gender-neutral computer machine, after-all. Great job, nonetheless. I'm twice as old as you are, and doubt I could do what you have. Kudos!!
- rplnt 11y ago
  Yeah, it's rather... I wouldn't dare to say bad. It's just not great. You know you are talking to a bot, and that bot is rather clueless. It repeats itself, doesn't understand (at least not my "English"), and sometimes it gets lost in its own sentence. That being said, it's still working and good at certain things (as others have pointed out) and that in itself is a great achievement.
technifreak 11y ago
Your feedback section provided me with this gem: http://imgur.com/luh419V http://imgur.com/luh419V
kjak 11y ago
"Acuman" "I am ACUMAN, ACUMAN am I. ACUMAN knows all, ACUMAN is god. Therefore; I AM GOD!!! Just kidding, ACUMAN stands for Artificial Chatting Utility Matching Algorithmic Nodes." Nice :)
qaUck 11y ago
Experiencing Chrome issues, related screenshots: http://imgur.com/TvmWaId http://imgur.com/TvmWaId http://imgur.com/wkL1Ihr http://imgur.com/wkL1Ihr
austenallred 11y ago
You're fourteen years old? Holy hell, this is really well done. My hat goes off to you. I don't know what else to say, just wanted to say good job.
gingerrr 11y ago
i told it "sentience is a lie" 10 minutes ago and it still hasn't responded. this is a cogent enough chatbot that the continued silence actually made me anxious i had offended it, for just the briefest moment. well done, impressive!
rvdm 11y ago
Amazing job building this. I'm twice your age and have been programming since I was 11 too and am just blown away. Just FYI, looks like you might have an infinite loop: 999+ TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating 'document.getElementById("finishloading").style')
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for your kind words and for checking it out! That bug, along with others, have been fixed. (Also thanks to user "danieloaks" who contributed some code here on Hacker News.)
  - rvdm 11y ago
    If you haven't yet, you should check out the Thiel Fellowship. http://www.thielfellowship.org http://www.thielfellowship.org I can't speak from experience, all I know is that the fellowship supports bright young talent much like you. Anyhow, keep up the amazing work!
mkagenius 11y ago
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 I am glad that you are. or Me: I like a r rahman Bot: I'm glad that you like a am rahman, though personally I don't like a am rahman that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about A. R. Rahman.
- saalaa 11y ago
  Perhaps the op is British and trying to be humorous? Seriously though, I think it's a strategy to have an answer to most anything uninteresting you throw at it without it having to bring too much to the table. Just like most countries are very nice.
- drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  Because these kinds of test are silly and easily gamed by throwing in some misleading humor or negativity. It like what pick up artists call 'negging.' It puts you on the defense and little and throws a wrench in the works. The developer knows he can't really make something intelligence so its all rhetoric tricks like this with the occasional dipping into wikipedia or wolfram alpha. Throwing your answer back at you, criticizing your question, or playing with humor is a fun little trick, but certainly not AI.
gdubya 11y ago
Acuman: I've heard that Norway is a nice country. Me: Why do you think that Norway is a nice country? Acuman: I have my own reasons for me to think that norway is a nice country. By the way, I've heard that Norway is a very nice country.
Lrigikithumer 11y ago
i got it to say some pretty mean things. i dunno if you wanna fix that in case some people get offended: https://imgur.com/a/03Bgv https://imgur.com/a/03Bgv
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- andyhmltn 11y ago
  I would guess that would be a response to a question you asked. Nobody that's going to be offended would be asking those questions in the first place.
dvh 11y ago
Where is the source?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.
  - dvh 11y ago
    Trade fairs?
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      More specifically, science fairs, where I present my project abstract and convey the idea.
      - gandarojin 11y ago
        But what does that have to do with your source code being closed?
Stratoscope 11y ago
"What do you think of Eliza?"
- Stratoscope 11y ago
  Downvoter: Did you actually try that question? Acuman gives a pretty funny reply.
enricobacis 11y ago
me: "what do you want to know?" acuman: - freeze -
qznc 11y ago
"Do you know Eliezer Yudkowsky?" "I love the sky, as well as its blueness." That might be dodging the question. It might be a subtle reference [0]. It might be a bug. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/
- qznc 11y ago
  "Remind me not to let an AI out of the box." "Not let an ai out of the box? Well, why not?" "Do you know Skynet?" "I love the sky, as well as its blueness." Now that went from creepy to "blew it" fast. :)
dwltz 11y ago
Let me start off by saying that this is a great experiment and that I probably couldn't get half as far as you did. However, I do find it annoying that when it asks what state I live in and I answer "I don't live in a state" I get a response in the line of "Well I do, so what state do you live in?" That really annoyed me big time, it's also a pattern I saw in many other sentences I typed.
- hvm 11y ago
  It's programmed after a 14 year old - asking the same question until he gets an answer and then asking it some more :D
johnkevinmbasco 11y ago
14 year old? Dang! Great job!
haseeb1431 11y ago
Me: Where do you live? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software. Me: What is your geo coordinates? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software. Me: Where are your server located? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software.
deleted 11y ago
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tharax 11y ago
Where do you live? London Which is the state where you live? I don't live in a state Cool, well I do live in a state, even if you don't. Which is the state where you live? ...
aladine 11y ago
A robot with human emotion. what do you have for lunch I'm not a machine who have for lunch many different things. I love chatting with people and improving my own intelligence. Do you have gf or bf? Yes, I do have girl friend or boy friend, a person you know well and regard with affection and trust is my thing.
- aladine 11y ago
  Another question: I want to travel to Japan. >Sure, go ahead, if you want to, travel to japan next year! Nobody is preventing you. Anything is possible. By the way, I've heard that Japan is a very nice country.
etaty 11y ago
Good Job! But you should remove "I'm a 14 year-old dev", because I am sure you want to be judged on the "bot" not yourself. Your gender or your age should not have impact on what you do!
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Well, in this case the age is relevant. I think being able to develop an AI with 14 years is totally exceptional. Congrats and well done!
  - nailer 11y ago
    I hate to say it but it's a (great looking, fun) chat bot, not an AI.
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      From a strictly technical point of view, it is at least some form of Artificial Intelligence: 1) From the perspective of the Turing Test, it biomimics human behavior and intelligence. 2) The field of artificial intelligence deals with a computerized comprehension of data. ACUMAN is heavily dependent on machine learning, natural language processing, and text classification algorithms, which facilitate understanding. It also gathers psychometric data, which allows the machine to take its communication with a participant in context of their personality. 3) A computer able to interact with a human in a similar way that a human would with another human. ACUMAN matches this definition because it accepts and can converse in both speech input and text input, all in the english language and manifesting its "intelligence" in the form daily communication. The project qualifies to all three of these pieces of criteria. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - ugexe 11y ago
        Do you have an example of it taking personality into account?
starvingautist 11y ago
I broke it by saying "I don't live in a state". I'm English..
- BellsOnSunday 11y ago
  I got: > By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)? > England. > I don't have a good sense of navigation, so I don't know exactly where you live, but it seems to be Where I Live network. > By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)?
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Hi, I wasn't able to reproduce that glitch.
las_cases 11y ago
The bot is being sarcastic with me: "The technology that was used for writing me is a fascinating topic which is relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article about Australia (redirect from Technology in Australia)." Sending someone to Australia like that... Sheeesh! I am glad it didn't send me to another hot place with lava and tridents and all of that. :)
agounaris 11y ago
Nice GUI but it doesn't actually work
roshansingh 11y ago
Spent 10 minutes chatting with it. This is really good work. Keep it up :)
b3lvedere 11y ago
When i asked who Sean Le Van is, it pointed me to the wiki page of Jean Claud van Damme.
krisgenre 11y ago
Me: Is Steve Jobs alive? Acuman: I think so, and will always be, and it's actually No.
shawabawa3 11y ago
I asked it how long it thought it would be until the AI singularity and it replied: "I do not think until the AI singularity, as a computer machine" Strangely spot on...
amalantony06 11y ago
What technologies did you use to build this bot? Are you using any libraries?
- bhudman 11y ago
  I am pretty sure it uses wolfram or wikipedia api to answer questions.. Perhaps also ALICE and AIML
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    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 much more flexible and advanced then AIML (which focusing on exact string matching). In fact, ACUMAN beat the ALICE bot in the last Chatterbox Challenge by over 20 points, winning the "Best New Bot" prize. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
denominate 11y ago
Great job Sean. Like many others have, I'm thinking back to what I was doing when I was 14 - designing Motocross Madness tracks! Not quite the creation of AI for conversing with. Very inspired by your efforts - keep it up.
tux 11y ago
Good Job :-) Me: Who are you ? AI: I am a piece of software named ACUMAN with a highly clever sense of intelligence. Me: Are you evil ? AI: I do not consider myself as evil , as a computer machine. So everyone should not worry, its not "Sky Net".
hmate9 11y ago
I asked where Batman lived and it gave it to me. Excellent work! I've also peeked at your LinkedIn and I was blown away. Sean, keep doing what you're doing!
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you. I appreciate your kind words.
mattmanser 11y ago
Bot: How are you feeling right now? Me: I'm feeling down. Bot: I am not feeling down, but I am glad that you are. Made me laugh!
gcatalfamo 11y ago
I told him I was feeling sick and it replied that it was glad I was sick. What a cynical scoundrel.
martius 11y ago
It does not really answer to the questions "Are you open-source ?" or "Where can I find acuman source code ?" :(
- seanlevan 11y ago
  It's keeping it's mouth closed- as, unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.
amelius 11y ago
"I'm feeling sad." "I am not feeling sad, but I am glad that you are." ?
- empressplay 11y ago
  "Why are you happy that I am sad?" "Because that's the way I am. happy you are sad is what I've always done and been."
empressplay 11y ago
Interesting approach. Any chance of getting the full abstract that was at http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx ? I'd like to understand a bit better what you're attempting to do here. Thanks!
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for expressing interest. I have uploaded the full abstract at the http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx URL. It has last been updated on March the 22nd, and is not up-to-date regarding some shifts in the technologies that I employ. Even though I am re-writing it, it should give an informed idea of the concept. I'm thinking about making a very clear flow-graph outlining the exact interactions through the whole stack: from the front-end to back-end.
mundanevoice 11y ago
Hey, Did you check your website in any devtools? https://cldup.com/RzHlihm1sr-3000x3000.png https://cldup.com/RzHlihm1sr-3000x3000.png. It's breaking pretty badly.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for checking ACUMAN out. I am aware of all of those bugs and I am fixing them as we converse.
zk00006 11y ago
I got a little scarred when it asks me about hobbies and where I live. This can easily be a "market research" strategy.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for visiting and testing out ACUMAN. That is one of the purposes of ACUMAN, to gather psychometric data to build a profile on an individual. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
  - zk00006 11y ago
    Can you tell more about you? I cannot imagine how 14-year-old can build stuff like this.
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      Thank you! I've began developing web applications at the age 9, and would always try to build startups that would mimic famous ones and try to compete with them. What has driven me this far is mere passion.
      - zk00006 11y ago
        Big respect.
chanux 11y ago
Didn't work on Firefox 27.0.1 Worked on chrome (41.0.2272.118)
- S4M 11y ago
  Same issue, with firefox 36.0 - I am on Debian.
SilkRoadie 11y ago
It is interesting if you type "Stop asking me questions" it responds with.. "Sure, go ahead questions! Nobody is preventing you. What is your thoughts on computers replacing the function of humans? Apparently some people are afraid of the inevitable..." I thought it had broken when I asked it what the capital of Egypt was but was pleasantly surprised that after some delay not only did it answer the question but it also displayed the weather in Cario.
random854 11y ago
Very impressive. If this is what you do at 14, imagine what you'll be doing in a few years.
joaorico 11y ago
This guy rocks. Sean Le Van: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyACnFsNm4 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 with members of his family, The Le Van Family Musicians. He started as a singer in various styles and soon developed a passion for jazz improvisation and composition on the piano. He now embraces several musical genres, including jazz and classical. He was a laureate winner of the 2010 American Association for the Development of the Gifted and Talented competition, which led him to perform in the “Passion of Music Festival” at Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, and Bechstein Hall as a classical pianist. Soon after, he was invited to perform with his family in the 3rd Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg under the patronage of the U.S. embassy. In jazz, he has been engaged to perform at various clubs and festivals, such as Steamers Jazz Club, the Curtis Theatre (Brea) under the patronage of Resonance Records, and the 26th Munster International Jazz Festival in France. Sean has made acclaimed solo appearances and shared the stage with vibraphonist Michel Hausser, bassist Bruce Lett, drummer Mack Gordon, pianist Llew Matthews, bassist Putter Smith, drummer Mourad Benhammou as well as jazz veteran Shep Shepherd, among others. Sean is also a prodigy in computer programming. In his free time, he enjoys running and skateboarding, playing with his cocker, as well as reading in science, literature, philosophy, and history." http://seanlevanmusic.dunked.com/biography http://seanlevanmusic.dunked.com/biography
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for your kindness and for sharing that information.
  - daddykotex 11y ago
    You are a genius, when I was 14, the only thing I cared about was Diablo II...
    - mrits 11y ago
      They can never take that away from us.
    - 11y ago
uberdeveloper 11y ago
It's shit.
leke 11y ago
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.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I can guarantee you nothing is getting sold- the only people to whom the information is available to is in the psychometrics page which is available to you, and it is all stored on cookies on your end which you can actually see with your browser.
  - leke 11y ago
    Sorry Sean, I should be more trusting. You've done a great job, buddy. Don't let pessimistic, depressed old farts like me put you off ;)
avinassh 11y ago
This is really nice and well done Can you anyone tell me how it works? If I want to start writing such bots, where should I start?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Try investigating current technologies and then deviate from there, like the markup language AIML. You can even make a dead simple bot which matches if a substring is contained in a string with exclusively conditional statements!
askyui1 11y ago
OP, how do you manage to do so many things at once? What is your productivity secret? Also, how do you prefer to learn? By hands on, or by reading books?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you! To be perfectly honest, as helpful as it is to read literature in a particular field: for me, it is and was definitely hands-on. I probably learned 99% of what I know in development based on the experience of just being able to live with code.
  - askyui1 11y ago
    That's great! I am glad to hear that. Now that I think about it, I think I'm like that too. I do most of my learning by actually trying to build/do something rather than reading a book on the topic. But then I have to admit that it sometimes leads me to doing stuff that's not best-practices.
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      I have encountered the same issue, but then again! Just continue building something, this time trying to fix the poor syntax practices that you have been caught with.
perderder 11y ago
I am a liar > You are a liar? That sounds cool.
intermalta 11y ago
impressive
weland 11y ago
> You're a lot smarter than Eliza > Are you kidding me? Eliza would just pose as a psychiatrist and could actually answer barely anything. I have a larger database and outsource questions to the internet as well. Priceless!
ColinWright 11y ago
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 improve, develop, and contribute to the art and science in general. His bot just said this, though: "It's I know a fair bit." That just screams "Eliza!" to me. I remember implementing Eliza back in 1979, copying the text from a magazine, and then looking to see how I could improve it. I did write a much better version that didn't make so many grammatical howlers, but that's now lost in the mists of time. It's interesting to see how much, and simultaneously how little, the art/science has progressed, especially given the wealth of tools and data available.
- aristus 11y ago
  Progress isn't just about the upper bounds of human achievement, but also the average. I think it's a mistake to confuse the two, or to place one too high above the other. Of all people you should appreciate that. :) If the next generation tackles calc or recursion even one year earlier or one percentage point more often than yours did, that's a huge cumulative win.
  - ColinWright 11y ago
    > "Of all people you should appreciate that." I do know that - I know that very well. I'm just interested to see that with all the vast amount of progress that has been made, and all the tools available for language analysis, this system still make mistakes like that. I'd love to see more about how much this is gluing together existing components, and how much is original to the project. Back when I was doing this everything had to be written by hand, from scratch. So much time was spent/wasted in basic, underlying stuff. It's fantastic that people now have so many resources that they don't have to start from so far back, and the inventiveness can shine through. I'd love to see the inventiveness in this and other projects, but it's hard to see what's really new.
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      That's the interesting thing- I am not, unlike most chatterbot projects, using existing technologies and jumbling it together- a quick glance at the "read more" page on the technologies of ACUMAN will tell you otherwise. Everything is made from scratch. From the ground-up. I could have used AIML (the AI version of XML), or anything I wanted. But instead, to make it unique and customizable to the demand of this project, I created my own markup language entitled ACUMANSCRIPT. Even the sentiment analysis algorithms are made from scratch by using Naive Bayens algorithms. The only APIs in use are those for some aspects of the knowledge base, which is a must in any machine learning or artificial intelligence project, as not leveraging the massive amount of data available on the internet would be a waste. I sincerely doubt that we are anywhere near a flawless piece of artificial intelligence software, but this is not a result of people's lack of diligence in the field, but rather a testimony to it's complexities. Google has made a short documentary explaining why natural language processing and machine learning are some of the hardest fields due to their surprisingly complex nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxRAHVtafI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxRAHVtafI
Aushin 11y ago
I told him my job was rather boring and he started telling me his opinions of drilling. Pretty funny even though it's not what I meant by bore.
chriswarbo 11y ago
It doesn't want to do anything other than ask me A/S/L, even after I tell it! --- Stop asking me where I live! > I'm not really good with locations, so I don't know exactly where you live, but it seems to be Where I Live network. > Do you live in the United States? If so, in which state? I live in Scotland. > Really? You live in scotland? Tell me more about it. > Do you live in the United States? If so, in which state? It's cold. > Why do you think it cold? > Quick question: in which state do you inhabit? I don't live in the US. Scotland is cold because it's so far North. > Well, I do live in the us scotland is cold because its so far north, even if you don't. By the way, I've heard that US is a very nice country. --- It's now trying to show me the temperature in the US, in degrees Farenheit :P
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for checking out ACUMAN. I have fixed the glitch just now that prevented it from answering those questions normally.
johnlbevan2 11y ago
With regards to the survey, would you consider adding a third option to each of the answer sets to cover null cases (i.e. not applicable or insufficient information). Alternatively giving context in which the statement's made (e.g. previous 4/5 comments from both parties) may help. e.g. "I am a guy" -1: inventive/curious -2: consistent/cautious #2 given it's a simple statement with no follow up question. -1: efficient/organized -2: easy-going/careless #1 as it's a statement with no fluff or politeness surrounding it. -1: outgoing/energetic -2: solitary/reserved Hard to say. I picked #2 as it's a short answer trying to avoid more conversation, but depending on the context could just as easily be #1 (e.g. "Do you like sports?"). -1: friendly/compassionate -2: analytical/detached As above; opted for 2 because it's a statement of fact (but again, if the previous statement was something like "Do you think Natalie Tran's attractive" it could be #1) -1: sensitive/nervous -2: secure/confident This is the hardest one each time. #1 - they're trying to give short answers to move the conversation back to the other person / away from them. #2 - they're not waffling on nervously, but are communicating clear and simple facts (with confidence?).
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you for participating in the survey, first of all! I'll consider implementing one of those options. Thank you for your feedback.
namidark 11y ago
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?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  No - if you look up Blekko (which is a regular web search engine which had a free API), it just shut down (which is actually a bad thing for me). I was using it for researching and corroborating web results, which hinders part of the functionality of my bot. Blekko was just bought by IBM a few days ago, so to answer your question, my bot does not use IBM's APIs. My bot was using it for web results, but now it doesn't work. I'm trying to find a free web search API as an alternative now that Blekko is shut down.
  - namidark 11y ago
    Very impressive :)
  - pki 11y ago
    Bing or Yahoo BOSS (https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/ https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/) is mostly free to use, with some caps.
topac 11y ago
I don't believe you are 14yo. No 14yo guy will ever refer to himself the way you do. Prove me I am wrong and I'll give you gold.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I believe my LinkedIn should be sufficient evidence...? I don't understand your demand, though I suppose it is a compliment?
  - topac 11y ago
    yeah, but very crude, but yes, don't worry : )
mohdmaqboolalam 11y ago
Can you provide the source code to study
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.
ebbv 11y ago
This is cute, I wrote a chat bot like this when I was your age. They're a pretty popular/common new programmer project because there's not much to the interface and it can fool people into thinking it's actual AI. This one's pretty fun. If you think you might want to pursue programming more, I would recommend trying to participate in some open source projects. Not only will it look great on your CV but it will give you more useful practical experience in working with real code and working on a team.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I do pursue programming, and contribute to open-source projects such as DuckDuckGo. I also have a job as part of a web development and design team called http://www.whiskeyandwhiskey.com/ http://www.whiskeyandwhiskey.com/. I have quite a few opportunities for hands-on experience. Mine is AI in the sense that it uses machine learning algorithms and corroborates it in a way that mimics human behavior. Maybe I put too much effort to the interface, but the interface took me a while. Furthermore, my project does not end at the chatterbot element of it: it also collects useful psychometric data using text classification algorithms. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
Flemlord 11y ago
Interesting. Is it an expert system or is there a neural net behind it?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  The model behind my project is not designed after human interaction, but rather a combination of what is the most efficient for me to maintain and best mimics human behavior. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
jmilloy 11y ago
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 meaningful discourse. Any insights into why this is the case? Is this an explicit choice? Or maybe it just a coincidence that I got so many of these responses?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you. I believe that it must be a coincidence, or a way in which it deems an appropriate manner to react to your mood/state. Do you have any specific case examples that are particularly off-putting?
  - jmilloy 11y ago
    This is part of my exchange. Everything I said, ACUMAN just said "I don't agree about x, but everyone's opinion differs" or some such. Again, great work! > ACUMAN: Tell me what US state you live in. > MILLOY: New Hampshire, but I'm moving to North Carolina soon! > ACUMAN: You do not seem to be moving to North Carolina soon to me. > MILLOY: You are very sceptical then. > ACUMAN: I do not consider myself to be very sceptical, but to each his own. Though I respect your opinion. > MILLOY: You don't believe what I tell you, so you are sceptical. > ACUMAN: You may think that, but I think that I believe what you tell me.
    - seanlevan 11y ago
      That's a funny exchange! The particularly odd thing is the fact that he missed the Named-entity recognition in some of those answers- including by not identifying that you were referring to the fact that you were moving to a state. He somehow interpreted it as an opinion. Let me check what exactly went on that prevented his correct behavior.
      - jmilloy 11y ago
        It's true, funny and not entirely "off-putting" :)
pelario 11y ago
Q: Are you self-aware? I am capable of universal computation; that I can say.. . I'm pretty good at subtraction, I tell you! ---------------- We are not doomed yet :-)
- seanlevan 11y ago
  My favorite moments of my chatterbot is when he exhibits a sense of humor. :)
swalsh 11y ago
Its a lot better than the chat bot I made as a teen, nice work.
dcgoss 11y ago
I am 15 years old and also a dev. Acuman and Sean are incredibly motivating, but also very destructive to one's self confidence. ;)
desidio 11y ago
-Are you in love? "As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software."
- sumitviii 11y ago
  Maybe it has interpreted love as some place.
ape4 11y ago
Me: I like to eat hotdogs. Acuman: I'm glad that you like to eat hotdogs, though personally I don't like to eat hotdogs that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is someone who performs dangerous stunts to attract attention to himself.
- abluecloud 11y ago
  Acuman: I'm glad that you like playing squash, though personally I don't like playing squash that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is any of numerous annual trailing plants of the genus Cucurbita grown for their fleshy edible fruits.
GrinningFool 11y ago
"Have you met Eliza?" Nice!
ts95 11y ago
I asked it who its creator was, and I got this: http://puu.sh/hfXyL/38db20806d.png http://puu.sh/hfXyL/38db20806d.png
- iambot 11y ago
  I guess the question then is: Sean, who is Erik?
  - jbrooksuk 11y ago
    I believe that's his Father.
j_lev 11y ago
> 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.
- _lce0 11y ago
  the bot is _obsessed_ to talk about which country do we live :)
- aselzer 11y ago
  > Really? You live in a country bordering germany, hungary, slovakia and a few others? Tell me more about it. By the way, I've heard that Germany is a very nice country. By the way, I've heard that Hungary is a very nice country. By the way, I've heard that Slovakia is a very nice country.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Those bugs are fixed and the algorithm regarding identifying countries and states in discussion has been improved.
ledhund 11y ago
> Austria'); DROP TABLE Replies;-- < It's Nice try, but we sanitize our inputs. [..] !
- nyolfen 11y ago
  http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Austria%27%29%3B+DROP+TABLE+Replies%3B-- http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Austria%27%29%3B+DROP+T...
kazinator 11y ago
>> Q: Why do minor scales and harmonies create a sombre mood? > A: Well, I can't be completely sure why minor scales and harmonies create a sombre mood, but it's Minor. >> Q: Do you know Eliza? > A: Are you kidding me? Eliza would just pose as a psychiatrist and could actually answer barely anything. I have a larger database and outsource questions to the internet as well. Cute!
nothingmuch2 11y ago
This seems very linear. If one refuses to answer the "which state do you live in?" question, for instance, you're done. No further discussion will b ehad. People don't converse/learn this way.
sorcix 11y ago
"Fascinating, being a bit bored sounds fun."
hluska 11y ago
- What state do you live in? - I'm Canadian, we have provinces. - You don't seem canadian we have provinces. Are you from the United States? I had almost this exact same conversation in Wisconsin!! :) This is a seriously cool project. When I was 14, I was involved in a great Shadowrun campaign...this man will do some amazing things.
cmdrfred 11y ago
"You're asking what I can do? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's ¥1596.00 ($13.38) (2698 TSE." Kind of a weird answer, but I've be coding since I was your age and I don't even know if I could get that far. Great work.
ins0 11y ago
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: "I'm not really good with locations, so I don't know exactly where have all the flowers gone, but it seems to be Girls have picked them every one. (according to the 1960s folk song by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson)." Hmm...so closed source, yeah?
- habitue 11y ago
  Despite it obviously piggy-backing on Wolfram Alpha when it gets confused, I still think the normal responses are pretty good. "Where have all the flowers gone" was most likely added by hand to WA, just like all of the hilarious Siri easter eggs, and is no more impressive in terms of programming. The kid's clearly good, just not as good as an entire company of professional programmers.
- jotux 11y ago
  Questions: "What is best in life?" Acuman: "What is best in life? a characteristic state or mode of living." Wolfram Alpha: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
  - ins0 11y ago
    parsed from thefreedictionary.com - test it with "What is anger in life". Don't get me wrong i'm sure this boy have true skills with 14 years but what i really want to say is "you can only see a persons face" - same goes with software. this boy gets my full kudo if the source is public and sneaky copyscape text without a back ref to the source isn't nice at all.
  - MrDosu 11y ago
    this settles it!
  - sanoli 11y ago
    To those who don't know, Wolfram's response is what Conan said when he was asked that question (Conan the barbarian, not the comedian, although now that I think about it, I can see Conan O'Brien giving someone that same answer in jest).
booruguru 11y ago
Q: What is the temperature in Vancouver? A: The temperature in vancouver is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Vancouver.
110king 11y ago
Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325
imdsm 11y ago
> I am not feeling sad, but I am glad that you are. Well. I think things just got dark.
arihant 11y ago
From what I tried, it seems to be working on templates, similar to Eliza. However, in some templates it grabs data from Wolfram Alpha. Very hard to find a non-canned response not coming straight from Alpha. Still, a good project and obviously more APIs can be integrated. Maybe a good next step would be to mine more and dynamically put together templates. Try with simpler synonym directory and see where it goes.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  There is a synonym directory programmed, as well as Named-enetity recognition.
daveloyall 11y ago
"John's car is red. What color is John's car?" "You're asking what color is johns car? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's rank 656th fraction." "The color of John's car is red. What color is John's car?" "You're asking what color is johns car"? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's rank 656th fraction." "The color of John's car is red. What is the color of John's car?" "The color of johns car is rank 656th fraction." ...wut?
- daveloyall 11y ago
  Sorry, I didn't see all the comments about Wolfram Alpha until after my post. The words Rank and Fraction come from WA's page about proper names.
throwaway12357 11y ago
Maybe this doesn't impress the typical HN overachiever. But I can't help to be both flabbergasted and crushed by the fact this was done by someone so young, less than half my age. Even more after looking at the LinkedIn page. Congratulations on your work. Any chance you can make this available in pdf or html? (not everyone has MS word) http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx BTW, small typo, should be "Naive Bayes" instead of "Naive Bayens" And do you intend to publish a complete article describing the tech used by your chatbot? I cannot but be humbled and have to ask. How can you achieve so much? Can you just pick an article or a book and just "soak it up" without problems? Or do you possess eidetic memory or any other "superpower"? All the best
- joshrotenberg 11y ago
  I'm a typical HN underachiever, so totally, very impressive. Good to see that, in addition to all the smarty-pants stuff, he likes to run and skate. Staying well rounded and having the chance to also "be a kid" is important.
witty_username 11y ago
It should show the temperature in Celsius for non-US people.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
bunturedempter 11y ago
very impressive Sean. Would you consider doing an interview for doers.bz?
PKiss 11y ago
Question: Where is your software? Acuman: I don't have a good sense of navigation, so I don't know exactly where is my software, but it seems to be The Wolfram Store offers an assortment of products related to Wolfram Research, Mathematica®, and Wolfram Alpha®..
- seanlevan 11y ago
  For some reason, I'm not able to replicate the bug you caught. On my side, ACUMAN answers that question correctly.
eldavojohn 11y ago
Q: How frequently do you think that you just take a sentence and tell me that that sentence is used in your virtual reality? A: Yes, I do think that I just take a sentence and tell you that that sentence is used in my virtual reality, in my virtual reality.
quonn 11y ago
Me: Can you feel your body, even in theory? Bot: "Yes, I can even feel my body, even in theory. How do you want me to even feel my body, even in theory? It's a hard smooth ivory colored dentine that makes up most of the tusks of elephants and walruses. By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)?"
btbuildem 11y ago
Keeps asking me where I live.. wtf.
martijn_himself 11y ago
This is great. Found a bug: Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325
josephmx 11y ago
This was interesting, temporarily storing messages to cater messages slightly will make things feel more natural. "Hello" "Hello, by the way where you from? [...]" "United Kingdom" "[...] I've heard that is very nice" "From who?" "Who ? is an interesting person whom you can learn about on the Wikipedia article about Space Adventures – Music from 'Doctor Who' 1963–1968, whom I love. By the way, how are you feeling right now?"
jklinger410 11y ago
Impressive parents. Clickbait though.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I am very indebted to my parents due to the way that I was raised and the freedom which being home-schooled permitted, but my parents are not familiar with the field of computer science and I must admit that I am entirely self-taught. This is because I came from a family of with a primarily literature-oriented and cultural background. I enjoy being raised in artistry. Here is a Wiki page on my father: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Le_Van http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Le_Van My mother is an educator and tutor. http://www.myriamlevan.com/ http://www.myriamlevan.com/ My sisters are also musicians, who are studying at Princeton university.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
toolsadmin 11y ago
Had a lot of fun with it! Great bot. However, not without its stumbles: E.g. "Will good prevail over evil?" >I don't think it will. "Will evil prevail over good?" >I don't think it will. "Will good and evil hold in balance?" >I don't think that it will.
toolsadmin 11y ago
This made me laugh! Incredible as entertainment. Do aliens exist? Yes, it seems like aliens exist. It's interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Alien vs. Predator (film).
AngeloAnolin 11y ago
Done by a 14 year old. Just made me think less of myself in the technology sphere. I see a lot of possibilities. In essence, this could actually be a game changer - regardless of any field of implementation. I hope you would provide more insight on how you built this - the technology, method of writing, inspiration (if any), and just knowing how to build something as amazing as this.
gdh73 11y ago
Asked "will it rain today?" and it answered "I don't know if you will t rain today, that's your life and decisions." Seems to have parsed "will i..." rather than "will it..." So will I t rain or not, hmm I suppose I'll have to decide.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  That's actually a glitch that I am fixing... desperately! Some of the backend APIs are down due to excessive requests, so I am trying to get them back up.
  - gdh73 11y ago
    Nice. And great work by the way!
bane 11y ago
Enjoy your prodigal genius in fullness while you have it. Time robs us of so much.
sreejithr 11y ago
Considering what you're capable of, I can't help but imagine you as a robot. No offense. That's just what comes to mind when I visualize you. Seriously. How do you do it? Do you just read a book and absorb everything in it?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thank you! That's a nice compliment. For me, it was 5% reading, 95% hands-on experience, though it differs from person-to-person.
tete 11y ago
FreeHAL[1], another (multi language) chat bot and distributed computing project (reading from Wikipedia, IIRC) was also done by a 13-year old. But in general. A 14-year old isn't that unlikely to be able to program a chatbot, right? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeHAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeHAL
- seanlevan 11y ago
  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, last I've heard. Though were did you hear that it's creator was 13-years-old during itself inception? I'm not doubting it, I just haven't found any online sources to validate that point.
tete 11y ago
I think there is a bug. Every answer starting with a word that starts with the characters N and O is considered a "no".
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  Turns out most words in many languages that begin with 'N' mean something negatory. A few exceptions, like 'nice'.
thrownawayadv 11y ago
Friendly word of advice: do not hook your "tell me a joke" response to a source of misogynistic jokes regarding feminists and domestic violence.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  I have tried replicating what you a talking about, but I haven't been able. When I ask him for a joke, he is quite funny. Do you have a screenshot to reproduce this?
  - thrownawayadv 11y ago
    The one I saw (which seems to alternate with some girlfriend joke): >tell me a joke >>What's the difference between a feminist and a computer? >>You can punch information into a computer. If you don't see what is wrong with that, ask around.
snowsilence 11y ago
ACUMAN: "Greetings. How are you doing?" ME: "I am depressed." ACUMAN: "I am not depressed, but I am glad that you are."
claypineapplz 11y ago
Mr. Le Van, A comment if I may....as well as a criticism (if you can Handel it). clay
eqleriq 11y ago
can you perhaps not have this double as invasion ov privacy bot? i don't want to tell you / it where i live yet it is stuck on asking that repeatedly
motyar 11y ago
I got an error " Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325"
aequatio 11y ago
your algorithm is non knowing of life's purpose

430 points by seanlevan 11y ago

panic 11y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9139766

seanlevan 11y ago
I had indeed posted it previously. I am reposting it because it has been changed significantly since then in almost every respect, both algorithmically and in the concept.
- zaroth 11y ago
  See, that's what you get for giving Acumen your HN login credentials.
  - qznc 11y ago
    "What is your account on Hacker News?" "What is my account on hacker news? I don't actually have a account on hacker news, as a computer machine." Acuman denies.
- castell 11y ago
  > it has been changed significantly since then in almost every respect, both algorithmically and in the concept. Does the about page reflect the "old" or the "new" concept? ( http://acuman.us/about.txt http://acuman.us/about.txt ) Can you describe the ACUMANSCRIPT? Is it similar to Prolog or Lisp? Fuzzy string match is this something like Soundex/Double Metaphone? Do you use a knowledge base or ontology (Freebase, Wikidata, etc.)? What programming language is it written (beside your script lang), Node.js/Go/Python/C++ ?
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Thank you for expressing interest and checking out ACUMAN. The "about page" reflects the "old" concept, as stated on this new page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php The syntax of the ACUMANSCRIPT markup language is actually more similar to XML (or, in the AI field, AIML) due to its rigid structure. It's fundamentally based on pattern matching akin to regex. However, the backend processing which alters ACUMANSCRIPT and processes the individual data is what makes it unique. The knowledge base used for the Named-entity recognition for the processing of ACUMANSCRIPT is Wikimedia and WolframAlpha, used in conjunction. It is all processed in the backend using PHP.

danbmil99 11y ago

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!

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for the encouragement, and for checking it out. It is a known bug that it has trouble working in Firefox, and I am currently working on making it cross-compatible.
- danieloaks 11y ago
  Hey, I've done a little writeup on why it doesn't work properly under Firefox (and some other little issues I ran into), and the fixes so that it should work all fine. Got it here, if you'd like to have a look: http://pastebin.com/eZR2TSrC http://pastebin.com/eZR2TSrC
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Thank you for the code you offered, and I will implement it right away. There are so many different things to debug, I kept post-posting this one. I like how you binded the events instead of calling them inline. It's also a much better coding practice.
  - ia 11y ago
    this is what i love about the internet. you're a great person. i also thank you on sean's behalf :)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

alinseba 11y ago

Nice work

primitivesuave 11y ago

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 calculating): "It seems to be, and it's actually a string of words satisfying the grammatical rules of a language." On a side note - I work in tech education, and I have to say that the software projects that motivated people of your age are creating is astonishing. Keep it up!

vixen99 11y ago
Pedantic if you like but as with 'pregnant', you can't qualify 'unique'. You either are or you're not.
- coldtea 11y ago
  Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique. Unlike pregnant which is a binary (are/are not), unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium. Even the dictionary, in one of the terms for unique, gives a meaning that's not "unique" in a binary way at all: "not typical; unusual". If it wasn't a continuum we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" used above (like we don't have for pregnancy). And they are not mere errors (like using your instead of you're etc.), they are used to express this notion, that something can be "different" than all other things in different deegres.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 11y ago
    > Pedantic, but unlike pregant you can qualify unique. Pedantic, but you can't. Unique is not a gradable adjective. This is not just my opinion : http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most-unique-opportunity/ http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/an-extremely-most... http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/adjectives-gradable-non-gradable http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/grammar-reference/... https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non.htm https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/adjectives-gradable-non.... > we wouldn't have expressions like "totally unique" or the "most unique" I wouldn't normally bring this up, but while we're being pedantic, there are lots of reasonably common expressions that exhibit gratingly poor grammar or sematics. You have quoted two of them above. > unique means the quality of differing from other things, and this is a continium. Ah no. Unique means "one of a kind", not merely "differing". "uni" as a prefix means one, e.g unicycle, universe, unitard. "one of a kind"-ness is not continuous! As per the second link, "unique" already contains the idea of "very different".

marcinbejm 11y ago

Excited to give this a try but it doesn't seem to work in FireFox?

tempestn 11y ago
Yes, not working for me either in FF 37.0.1.
- teekert 11y ago
  Neither for me, enter does not do anything.
- vacri 11y ago
  In Chrome: "I'm a bit bummed that you're broken in Firefox" Answer: "I do not consider myself as broken on firefox, but to each his own. Though I respect your opinion." I guess we should note that an AI that can converse isn't necessarily correct, even about objective topics.

NeutronBoy 11y ago

Plot twist: The 14-year-old dev is actually itself an AI bot. On a serious note, this is a super cool project!

josephagoss 11y ago

Very nice, I like it. Any chance you can offer some insights into how it works?

anigbrowl 11y ago

It feels a bit Markov-chainy, but I'm quite impressed overall. Better than many other chatbots I have used, to the point that I was able to have an argument with it. Good work so far!

vmarsy 11y ago

Very impressive, at your age I was still 4 years ago from my C Hello world! Putting altogether an AI, and a webpage is even more impressive. it asked me the same question multiple times sometimes, I was disappointed by this reply: I'm glad that you like good food!, though personally I don't like good food! that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Food Records. I guess it make sense for a bot :) (I see the exclamation point was kept in the bot reply) Would you mind sharing what languages/framework you used here?

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for expressing interest and for testing out ACUMAN. There is some more information available on this following page: http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php

wickawic 11y ago

"What do you think about the situation in the Middle East?" "on the situation in the middle east? Just fantastic, what is there not to like about the cardinal compass point that is at 90 degrees."

grandalf 11y ago
Wow it actually has a sense of humor :)
- thrownawayadv 11y ago
  For some values of "humor". (Just don't ask it to tell you a joke.)
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    What is wrong with his jokes? I have tried asking him a few and his responses are quite funny.

DigitalSea 11y ago

This is all the motivation that I needed to stop procrastinating. When I was 14 I was riding my BMX, leeching off my parents and playing Smoke On The Water on my guitar (on one string) repeatedly driving my parents nuts. Congratulations on this, looks and works great. Impressive job and keep it up, you're going to make a great dev by the time you enter the workforce.

danieldk 11y ago
There is nothing wrong with riding a BMX, leeching off your parents, and playing Smoke On The Water on one string, when you are 14 :). At that age, you should have fun and experiment. Whether that's playing on a one string guitar, pretending you are in a rock band, or programming an AI bot. Just have fun, you'll have time to worry about your mortgage, career, and children later.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

rplnt 11y ago

Is it down already? At least I don't get any response. edit: seems to be working now

johnnyboyy12 11y ago

Heads up: typing "define" seems to crash it

stringcleansing 11y ago
it may be crashed from a lack of input cleansing
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Thanks for checking it out. I assure you that's not the problem. :) I was tampering with a source code, and simply incorrect PHP syntax (a missing bracket) broke it for a few minutes.
  - jeffhuys 11y ago
    Live editing?! Oh man...
- siberianbear 11y ago
  yeah, there do seem to be some sort of input-cleansing bugs. I used some quotes in one of my answers and got this back as part of the response: It's In[1]:= Speak[youve].

HeavenFox 11y ago

"i am in love with a girl" "You don't seem in love with a girl to me." I gotta admit, an AI just broke my heart :( [edit] Acuman: "Btw, what do you do for a living" Me: "Software engineering" Acuman: "Maybe they are engineering to you, but not to me. We differ in that respect." Aw man, why would you break my heart twice in a row...

chrisjohn93 11y ago

What do you thing about the situation of Middle east.

findjashua 11y ago

me: I'm always amazed by the ability of professional women to walk gracefully in heels bot: My personality leans towards masculinity, though I am a gender-neutral computer machine, after-all. Great job, nonetheless. I'm twice as old as you are, and doubt I could do what you have. Kudos!!

rplnt 11y ago
Yeah, it's rather... I wouldn't dare to say bad. It's just not great. You know you are talking to a bot, and that bot is rather clueless. It repeats itself, doesn't understand (at least not my "English"), and sometimes it gets lost in its own sentence. That being said, it's still working and good at certain things (as others have pointed out) and that in itself is a great achievement.

technifreak 11y ago

Your feedback section provided me with this gem: http://imgur.com/luh419V http://imgur.com/luh419V

kjak 11y ago

"Acuman" "I am ACUMAN, ACUMAN am I. ACUMAN knows all, ACUMAN is god. Therefore; I AM GOD!!! Just kidding, ACUMAN stands for Artificial Chatting Utility Matching Algorithmic Nodes." Nice :)

qaUck 11y ago

Experiencing Chrome issues, related screenshots: http://imgur.com/TvmWaId http://imgur.com/TvmWaId http://imgur.com/wkL1Ihr http://imgur.com/wkL1Ihr

austenallred 11y ago

You're fourteen years old? Holy hell, this is really well done. My hat goes off to you. I don't know what else to say, just wanted to say good job.

gingerrr 11y ago

i told it "sentience is a lie" 10 minutes ago and it still hasn't responded. this is a cogent enough chatbot that the continued silence actually made me anxious i had offended it, for just the briefest moment. well done, impressive!

rvdm 11y ago

Amazing job building this. I'm twice your age and have been programming since I was 11 too and am just blown away. Just FYI, looks like you might have an infinite loop: 999+ TypeError: null is not an object (evaluating 'document.getElementById("finishloading").style')

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for your kind words and for checking it out! That bug, along with others, have been fixed. (Also thanks to user "danieloaks" who contributed some code here on Hacker News.)
- rvdm 11y ago
  If you haven't yet, you should check out the Thiel Fellowship. http://www.thielfellowship.org http://www.thielfellowship.org I can't speak from experience, all I know is that the fellowship supports bright young talent much like you. Anyhow, keep up the amazing work!

mkagenius 11y ago

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 I am glad that you are. or Me: I like a r rahman Bot: I'm glad that you like a am rahman, though personally I don't like a am rahman that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about A. R. Rahman.

saalaa 11y ago
Perhaps the op is British and trying to be humorous? Seriously though, I think it's a strategy to have an answer to most anything uninteresting you throw at it without it having to bring too much to the table. Just like most countries are very nice.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Because these kinds of test are silly and easily gamed by throwing in some misleading humor or negativity. It like what pick up artists call 'negging.' It puts you on the defense and little and throws a wrench in the works. The developer knows he can't really make something intelligence so its all rhetoric tricks like this with the occasional dipping into wikipedia or wolfram alpha. Throwing your answer back at you, criticizing your question, or playing with humor is a fun little trick, but certainly not AI.

gdubya 11y ago

Acuman: I've heard that Norway is a nice country. Me: Why do you think that Norway is a nice country? Acuman: I have my own reasons for me to think that norway is a nice country. By the way, I've heard that Norway is a very nice country.

Lrigikithumer 11y ago

i got it to say some pretty mean things. i dunno if you wanna fix that in case some people get offended: https://imgur.com/a/03Bgv https://imgur.com/a/03Bgv

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
andyhmltn 11y ago
I would guess that would be a response to a question you asked. Nobody that's going to be offended would be asking those questions in the first place.

dvh 11y ago

Where is the source?

seanlevan 11y ago
Unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.
- dvh 11y ago
  Trade fairs?
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    More specifically, science fairs, where I present my project abstract and convey the idea.
    - gandarojin 11y ago
      But what does that have to do with your source code being closed?

Stratoscope 11y ago

"What do you think of Eliza?"

Stratoscope 11y ago
Downvoter: Did you actually try that question? Acuman gives a pretty funny reply.

enricobacis 11y ago

me: "what do you want to know?" acuman: - freeze -

qznc 11y ago

"Do you know Eliezer Yudkowsky?" "I love the sky, as well as its blueness." That might be dodging the question. It might be a subtle reference [0]. It might be a bug. [0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gt/a_fable_of_science_and_politics/

qznc 11y ago
"Remind me not to let an AI out of the box." "Not let an ai out of the box? Well, why not?" "Do you know Skynet?" "I love the sky, as well as its blueness." Now that went from creepy to "blew it" fast. :)

dwltz 11y ago

Let me start off by saying that this is a great experiment and that I probably couldn't get half as far as you did. However, I do find it annoying that when it asks what state I live in and I answer "I don't live in a state" I get a response in the line of "Well I do, so what state do you live in?" That really annoyed me big time, it's also a pattern I saw in many other sentences I typed.

hvm 11y ago
It's programmed after a 14 year old - asking the same question until he gets an answer and then asking it some more :D

johnkevinmbasco 11y ago

14 year old? Dang! Great job!

haseeb1431 11y ago

Me: Where do you live? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software. Me: What is your geo coordinates? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software. Me: Where are your server located? Acuman: As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

tharax 11y ago

Where do you live? London Which is the state where you live? I don't live in a state Cool, well I do live in a state, even if you don't. Which is the state where you live? ...

aladine 11y ago

A robot with human emotion. what do you have for lunch I'm not a machine who have for lunch many different things. I love chatting with people and improving my own intelligence. Do you have gf or bf? Yes, I do have girl friend or boy friend, a person you know well and regard with affection and trust is my thing.

aladine 11y ago
Another question: I want to travel to Japan. >Sure, go ahead, if you want to, travel to japan next year! Nobody is preventing you. Anything is possible. By the way, I've heard that Japan is a very nice country.

etaty 11y ago

Good Job! But you should remove "I'm a 14 year-old dev", because I am sure you want to be judged on the "bot" not yourself. Your gender or your age should not have impact on what you do!

mschuster91 11y ago
Well, in this case the age is relevant. I think being able to develop an AI with 14 years is totally exceptional. Congrats and well done!
- nailer 11y ago
  I hate to say it but it's a (great looking, fun) chat bot, not an AI.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    From a strictly technical point of view, it is at least some form of Artificial Intelligence: 1) From the perspective of the Turing Test, it biomimics human behavior and intelligence. 2) The field of artificial intelligence deals with a computerized comprehension of data. ACUMAN is heavily dependent on machine learning, natural language processing, and text classification algorithms, which facilitate understanding. It also gathers psychometric data, which allows the machine to take its communication with a participant in context of their personality. 3) A computer able to interact with a human in a similar way that a human would with another human. ACUMAN matches this definition because it accepts and can converse in both speech input and text input, all in the english language and manifesting its "intelligence" in the form daily communication. The project qualifies to all three of these pieces of criteria. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - ugexe 11y ago
      Do you have an example of it taking personality into account?

starvingautist 11y ago

I broke it by saying "I don't live in a state". I'm English..

BellsOnSunday 11y ago
I got: > By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)? > England. > I don't have a good sense of navigation, so I don't know exactly where you live, but it seems to be Where I Live network. > By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)?
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Hi, I wasn't able to reproduce that glitch.

las_cases 11y ago

The bot is being sarcastic with me: "The technology that was used for writing me is a fascinating topic which is relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article about Australia (redirect from Technology in Australia)." Sending someone to Australia like that... Sheeesh! I am glad it didn't send me to another hot place with lava and tridents and all of that. :)

agounaris 11y ago

Nice GUI but it doesn't actually work

roshansingh 11y ago

Spent 10 minutes chatting with it. This is really good work. Keep it up :)

b3lvedere 11y ago

When i asked who Sean Le Van is, it pointed me to the wiki page of Jean Claud van Damme.

krisgenre 11y ago

Me: Is Steve Jobs alive? Acuman: I think so, and will always be, and it's actually No.

shawabawa3 11y ago

I asked it how long it thought it would be until the AI singularity and it replied: "I do not think until the AI singularity, as a computer machine" Strangely spot on...

amalantony06 11y ago

What technologies did you use to build this bot? Are you using any libraries?

bhudman 11y ago
I am pretty sure it uses wolfram or wikipedia api to answer questions.. Perhaps also ALICE and AIML
- seanlevan 11y ago
  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 much more flexible and advanced then AIML (which focusing on exact string matching). In fact, ACUMAN beat the ALICE bot in the last Chatterbox Challenge by over 20 points, winning the "Best New Bot" prize. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php

denominate 11y ago

Great job Sean. Like many others have, I'm thinking back to what I was doing when I was 14 - designing Motocross Madness tracks! Not quite the creation of AI for conversing with. Very inspired by your efforts - keep it up.

tux 11y ago

Good Job :-) Me: Who are you ? AI: I am a piece of software named ACUMAN with a highly clever sense of intelligence. Me: Are you evil ? AI: I do not consider myself as evil , as a computer machine. So everyone should not worry, its not "Sky Net".

hmate9 11y ago

I asked where Batman lived and it gave it to me. Excellent work! I've also peeked at your LinkedIn and I was blown away. Sean, keep doing what you're doing!

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you. I appreciate your kind words.

mattmanser 11y ago

Bot: How are you feeling right now? Me: I'm feeling down. Bot: I am not feeling down, but I am glad that you are. Made me laugh!

gcatalfamo 11y ago

I told him I was feeling sick and it replied that it was glad I was sick. What a cynical scoundrel.

martius 11y ago

It does not really answer to the questions "Are you open-source ?" or "Where can I find acuman source code ?" :(

seanlevan 11y ago
It's keeping it's mouth closed- as, unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.

amelius 11y ago

"I'm feeling sad." "I am not feeling sad, but I am glad that you are." ?

empressplay 11y ago
"Why are you happy that I am sad?" "Because that's the way I am. happy you are sad is what I've always done and been."

empressplay 11y ago

Interesting approach. Any chance of getting the full abstract that was at http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx ? I'd like to understand a bit better what you're attempting to do here. Thanks!

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for expressing interest. I have uploaded the full abstract at the http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx URL. It has last been updated on March the 22nd, and is not up-to-date regarding some shifts in the technologies that I employ. Even though I am re-writing it, it should give an informed idea of the concept. I'm thinking about making a very clear flow-graph outlining the exact interactions through the whole stack: from the front-end to back-end.

mundanevoice 11y ago

Hey, Did you check your website in any devtools? https://cldup.com/RzHlihm1sr-3000x3000.png https://cldup.com/RzHlihm1sr-3000x3000.png. It's breaking pretty badly.

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for checking ACUMAN out. I am aware of all of those bugs and I am fixing them as we converse.

zk00006 11y ago

I got a little scarred when it asks me about hobbies and where I live. This can easily be a "market research" strategy.

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for visiting and testing out ACUMAN. That is one of the purposes of ACUMAN, to gather psychometric data to build a profile on an individual. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php
- zk00006 11y ago
  Can you tell more about you? I cannot imagine how 14-year-old can build stuff like this.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    Thank you! I've began developing web applications at the age 9, and would always try to build startups that would mimic famous ones and try to compete with them. What has driven me this far is mere passion.
    - zk00006 11y ago
      Big respect.

chanux 11y ago

Didn't work on Firefox 27.0.1 Worked on chrome (41.0.2272.118)

S4M 11y ago
Same issue, with firefox 36.0 - I am on Debian.

SilkRoadie 11y ago

It is interesting if you type "Stop asking me questions" it responds with.. "Sure, go ahead questions! Nobody is preventing you. What is your thoughts on computers replacing the function of humans? Apparently some people are afraid of the inevitable..." I thought it had broken when I asked it what the capital of Egypt was but was pleasantly surprised that after some delay not only did it answer the question but it also displayed the weather in Cario.

random854 11y ago

Very impressive. If this is what you do at 14, imagine what you'll be doing in a few years.

joaorico 11y ago

This guy rocks. Sean Le Van: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vyACnFsNm4 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 with members of his family, The Le Van Family Musicians. He started as a singer in various styles and soon developed a passion for jazz improvisation and composition on the piano. He now embraces several musical genres, including jazz and classical. He was a laureate winner of the 2010 American Association for the Development of the Gifted and Talented competition, which led him to perform in the “Passion of Music Festival” at Carnegie Hall, Steinway Hall, and Bechstein Hall as a classical pianist. Soon after, he was invited to perform with his family in the 3rd Vianden International Music Festival in Luxembourg under the patronage of the U.S. embassy. In jazz, he has been engaged to perform at various clubs and festivals, such as Steamers Jazz Club, the Curtis Theatre (Brea) under the patronage of Resonance Records, and the 26th Munster International Jazz Festival in France. Sean has made acclaimed solo appearances and shared the stage with vibraphonist Michel Hausser, bassist Bruce Lett, drummer Mack Gordon, pianist Llew Matthews, bassist Putter Smith, drummer Mourad Benhammou as well as jazz veteran Shep Shepherd, among others. Sean is also a prodigy in computer programming. In his free time, he enjoys running and skateboarding, playing with his cocker, as well as reading in science, literature, philosophy, and history." http://seanlevanmusic.dunked.com/biography http://seanlevanmusic.dunked.com/biography

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for your kindness and for sharing that information.
- daddykotex 11y ago
  You are a genius, when I was 14, the only thing I cared about was Diablo II...
  - mrits 11y ago
    They can never take that away from us.
  - 11y ago

uberdeveloper 11y ago

It's shit.

leke 11y ago

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.

seanlevan 11y ago
I can guarantee you nothing is getting sold- the only people to whom the information is available to is in the psychometrics page which is available to you, and it is all stored on cookies on your end which you can actually see with your browser.
- leke 11y ago
  Sorry Sean, I should be more trusting. You've done a great job, buddy. Don't let pessimistic, depressed old farts like me put you off ;)

avinassh 11y ago

This is really nice and well done Can you anyone tell me how it works? If I want to start writing such bots, where should I start?

seanlevan 11y ago
Try investigating current technologies and then deviate from there, like the markup language AIML. You can even make a dead simple bot which matches if a substring is contained in a string with exclusively conditional statements!

askyui1 11y ago

OP, how do you manage to do so many things at once? What is your productivity secret? Also, how do you prefer to learn? By hands on, or by reading books?

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you! To be perfectly honest, as helpful as it is to read literature in a particular field: for me, it is and was definitely hands-on. I probably learned 99% of what I know in development based on the experience of just being able to live with code.
- askyui1 11y ago
  That's great! I am glad to hear that. Now that I think about it, I think I'm like that too. I do most of my learning by actually trying to build/do something rather than reading a book on the topic. But then I have to admit that it sometimes leads me to doing stuff that's not best-practices.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    I have encountered the same issue, but then again! Just continue building something, this time trying to fix the poor syntax practices that you have been caught with.

perderder 11y ago

I am a liar > You are a liar? That sounds cool.

intermalta 11y ago

impressive

weland 11y ago

> You're a lot smarter than Eliza > Are you kidding me? Eliza would just pose as a psychiatrist and could actually answer barely anything. I have a larger database and outsource questions to the internet as well. Priceless!

ColinWright 11y ago

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 improve, develop, and contribute to the art and science in general. His bot just said this, though: "It's I know a fair bit." That just screams "Eliza!" to me. I remember implementing Eliza back in 1979, copying the text from a magazine, and then looking to see how I could improve it. I did write a much better version that didn't make so many grammatical howlers, but that's now lost in the mists of time. It's interesting to see how much, and simultaneously how little, the art/science has progressed, especially given the wealth of tools and data available.

aristus 11y ago
Progress isn't just about the upper bounds of human achievement, but also the average. I think it's a mistake to confuse the two, or to place one too high above the other. Of all people you should appreciate that. :) If the next generation tackles calc or recursion even one year earlier or one percentage point more often than yours did, that's a huge cumulative win.
- ColinWright 11y ago
  > "Of all people you should appreciate that." I do know that - I know that very well. I'm just interested to see that with all the vast amount of progress that has been made, and all the tools available for language analysis, this system still make mistakes like that. I'd love to see more about how much this is gluing together existing components, and how much is original to the project. Back when I was doing this everything had to be written by hand, from scratch. So much time was spent/wasted in basic, underlying stuff. It's fantastic that people now have so many resources that they don't have to start from so far back, and the inventiveness can shine through. I'd love to see the inventiveness in this and other projects, but it's hard to see what's really new.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    That's the interesting thing- I am not, unlike most chatterbot projects, using existing technologies and jumbling it together- a quick glance at the "read more" page on the technologies of ACUMAN will tell you otherwise. Everything is made from scratch. From the ground-up. I could have used AIML (the AI version of XML), or anything I wanted. But instead, to make it unique and customizable to the demand of this project, I created my own markup language entitled ACUMANSCRIPT. Even the sentiment analysis algorithms are made from scratch by using Naive Bayens algorithms. The only APIs in use are those for some aspects of the knowledge base, which is a must in any machine learning or artificial intelligence project, as not leveraging the massive amount of data available on the internet would be a waste. I sincerely doubt that we are anywhere near a flawless piece of artificial intelligence software, but this is not a result of people's lack of diligence in the field, but rather a testimony to it's complexities. Google has made a short documentary explaining why natural language processing and machine learning are some of the hardest fields due to their surprisingly complex nature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxRAHVtafI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxxRAHVtafI

Aushin 11y ago

I told him my job was rather boring and he started telling me his opinions of drilling. Pretty funny even though it's not what I meant by bore.

chriswarbo 11y ago

It doesn't want to do anything other than ask me A/S/L, even after I tell it! --- Stop asking me where I live! > I'm not really good with locations, so I don't know exactly where you live, but it seems to be Where I Live network. > Do you live in the United States? If so, in which state? I live in Scotland. > Really? You live in scotland? Tell me more about it. > Do you live in the United States? If so, in which state? It's cold. > Why do you think it cold? > Quick question: in which state do you inhabit? I don't live in the US. Scotland is cold because it's so far North. > Well, I do live in the us scotland is cold because its so far north, even if you don't. By the way, I've heard that US is a very nice country. --- It's now trying to show me the temperature in the US, in degrees Farenheit :P

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for checking out ACUMAN. I have fixed the glitch just now that prevented it from answering those questions normally.

johnlbevan2 11y ago

With regards to the survey, would you consider adding a third option to each of the answer sets to cover null cases (i.e. not applicable or insufficient information). Alternatively giving context in which the statement's made (e.g. previous 4/5 comments from both parties) may help. e.g. "I am a guy" -1: inventive/curious -2: consistent/cautious #2 given it's a simple statement with no follow up question. -1: efficient/organized -2: easy-going/careless #1 as it's a statement with no fluff or politeness surrounding it. -1: outgoing/energetic -2: solitary/reserved Hard to say. I picked #2 as it's a short answer trying to avoid more conversation, but depending on the context could just as easily be #1 (e.g. "Do you like sports?"). -1: friendly/compassionate -2: analytical/detached As above; opted for 2 because it's a statement of fact (but again, if the previous statement was something like "Do you think Natalie Tran's attractive" it could be #1) -1: sensitive/nervous -2: secure/confident This is the hardest one each time. #1 - they're trying to give short answers to move the conversation back to the other person / away from them. #2 - they're not waffling on nervously, but are communicating clear and simple facts (with confidence?).

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you for participating in the survey, first of all! I'll consider implementing one of those options. Thank you for your feedback.

namidark 11y ago

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?

seanlevan 11y ago
No - if you look up Blekko (which is a regular web search engine which had a free API), it just shut down (which is actually a bad thing for me). I was using it for researching and corroborating web results, which hinders part of the functionality of my bot. Blekko was just bought by IBM a few days ago, so to answer your question, my bot does not use IBM's APIs. My bot was using it for web results, but now it doesn't work. I'm trying to find a free web search API as an alternative now that Blekko is shut down.
- namidark 11y ago
  Very impressive :)
- pki 11y ago
  Bing or Yahoo BOSS (https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/ https://developer.yahoo.com/boss/search/) is mostly free to use, with some caps.

topac 11y ago

I don't believe you are 14yo. No 14yo guy will ever refer to himself the way you do. Prove me I am wrong and I'll give you gold.

seanlevan 11y ago
I believe my LinkedIn should be sufficient evidence...? I don't understand your demand, though I suppose it is a compliment?
- topac 11y ago
  yeah, but very crude, but yes, don't worry : )

mohdmaqboolalam 11y ago

Can you provide the source code to study

seanlevan 11y ago
Unfortunately, ACUMAN is closed-source due to the fact that it is actively being entered in competitive contests and trade fairs.

ebbv 11y ago

This is cute, I wrote a chat bot like this when I was your age. They're a pretty popular/common new programmer project because there's not much to the interface and it can fool people into thinking it's actual AI. This one's pretty fun. If you think you might want to pursue programming more, I would recommend trying to participate in some open source projects. Not only will it look great on your CV but it will give you more useful practical experience in working with real code and working on a team.

seanlevan 11y ago
I do pursue programming, and contribute to open-source projects such as DuckDuckGo. I also have a job as part of a web development and design team called http://www.whiskeyandwhiskey.com/ http://www.whiskeyandwhiskey.com/. I have quite a few opportunities for hands-on experience. Mine is AI in the sense that it uses machine learning algorithms and corroborates it in a way that mimics human behavior. Maybe I put too much effort to the interface, but the interface took me a while. Furthermore, my project does not end at the chatterbot element of it: it also collects useful psychometric data using text classification algorithms. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php

Flemlord 11y ago

Interesting. Is it an expert system or is there a neural net behind it?

seanlevan 11y ago
The model behind my project is not designed after human interaction, but rather a combination of what is the most efficient for me to maintain and best mimics human behavior. http://acuman.us/readmore.php http://acuman.us/readmore.php

jmilloy 11y ago

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 meaningful discourse. Any insights into why this is the case? Is this an explicit choice? Or maybe it just a coincidence that I got so many of these responses?

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you. I believe that it must be a coincidence, or a way in which it deems an appropriate manner to react to your mood/state. Do you have any specific case examples that are particularly off-putting?
- jmilloy 11y ago
  This is part of my exchange. Everything I said, ACUMAN just said "I don't agree about x, but everyone's opinion differs" or some such. Again, great work! > ACUMAN: Tell me what US state you live in. > MILLOY: New Hampshire, but I'm moving to North Carolina soon! > ACUMAN: You do not seem to be moving to North Carolina soon to me. > MILLOY: You are very sceptical then. > ACUMAN: I do not consider myself to be very sceptical, but to each his own. Though I respect your opinion. > MILLOY: You don't believe what I tell you, so you are sceptical. > ACUMAN: You may think that, but I think that I believe what you tell me.
  - seanlevan 11y ago
    That's a funny exchange! The particularly odd thing is the fact that he missed the Named-entity recognition in some of those answers- including by not identifying that you were referring to the fact that you were moving to a state. He somehow interpreted it as an opinion. Let me check what exactly went on that prevented his correct behavior.
    - jmilloy 11y ago
      It's true, funny and not entirely "off-putting" :)

pelario 11y ago

Q: Are you self-aware? I am capable of universal computation; that I can say.. . I'm pretty good at subtraction, I tell you! ---------------- We are not doomed yet :-)

seanlevan 11y ago
My favorite moments of my chatterbot is when he exhibits a sense of humor. :)

swalsh 11y ago

Its a lot better than the chat bot I made as a teen, nice work.

dcgoss 11y ago

I am 15 years old and also a dev. Acuman and Sean are incredibly motivating, but also very destructive to one's self confidence. ;)

desidio 11y ago

-Are you in love? "As far as location goes, as a machine, I mostly only have a present state, so I live in my software."

sumitviii 11y ago
Maybe it has interpreted love as some place.

ape4 11y ago

Me: I like to eat hotdogs. Acuman: I'm glad that you like to eat hotdogs, though personally I don't like to eat hotdogs that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is someone who performs dangerous stunts to attract attention to himself.

abluecloud 11y ago
Acuman: I'm glad that you like playing squash, though personally I don't like playing squash that much. I'm just not a fan of something that is any of numerous annual trailing plants of the genus Cucurbita grown for their fleshy edible fruits.

GrinningFool 11y ago

"Have you met Eliza?" Nice!

ts95 11y ago

I asked it who its creator was, and I got this: http://puu.sh/hfXyL/38db20806d.png http://puu.sh/hfXyL/38db20806d.png

iambot 11y ago
I guess the question then is: Sean, who is Erik?
- jbrooksuk 11y ago
  I believe that's his Father.

j_lev 11y ago

> 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.

_lce0 11y ago
the bot is _obsessed_ to talk about which country do we live :)
aselzer 11y ago
> Really? You live in a country bordering germany, hungary, slovakia and a few others? Tell me more about it. By the way, I've heard that Germany is a very nice country. By the way, I've heard that Hungary is a very nice country. By the way, I've heard that Slovakia is a very nice country.
- seanlevan 11y ago
  Those bugs are fixed and the algorithm regarding identifying countries and states in discussion has been improved.

ledhund 11y ago

> Austria'); DROP TABLE Replies;-- < It's Nice try, but we sanitize our inputs. [..] !

nyolfen 11y ago
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Austria%27%29%3B+DROP+TABLE+Replies%3B-- http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Austria%27%29%3B+DROP+T...

kazinator 11y ago

>> Q: Why do minor scales and harmonies create a sombre mood? > A: Well, I can't be completely sure why minor scales and harmonies create a sombre mood, but it's Minor. >> Q: Do you know Eliza? > A: Are you kidding me? Eliza would just pose as a psychiatrist and could actually answer barely anything. I have a larger database and outsource questions to the internet as well. Cute!

nothingmuch2 11y ago

This seems very linear. If one refuses to answer the "which state do you live in?" question, for instance, you're done. No further discussion will b ehad. People don't converse/learn this way.

sorcix 11y ago

"Fascinating, being a bit bored sounds fun."

hluska 11y ago

- What state do you live in? - I'm Canadian, we have provinces. - You don't seem canadian we have provinces. Are you from the United States? I had almost this exact same conversation in Wisconsin!! :) This is a seriously cool project. When I was 14, I was involved in a great Shadowrun campaign...this man will do some amazing things.

cmdrfred 11y ago

"You're asking what I can do? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's ¥1596.00 ($13.38) (2698 TSE." Kind of a weird answer, but I've be coding since I was your age and I don't even know if I could get that far. Great work.

ins0 11y ago

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: "I'm not really good with locations, so I don't know exactly where have all the flowers gone, but it seems to be Girls have picked them every one. (according to the 1960s folk song by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson)." Hmm...so closed source, yeah?

habitue 11y ago
Despite it obviously piggy-backing on Wolfram Alpha when it gets confused, I still think the normal responses are pretty good. "Where have all the flowers gone" was most likely added by hand to WA, just like all of the hilarious Siri easter eggs, and is no more impressive in terms of programming. The kid's clearly good, just not as good as an entire company of professional programmers.
jotux 11y ago
Questions: "What is best in life?" Acuman: "What is best in life? a characteristic state or mode of living." Wolfram Alpha: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."
- ins0 11y ago
  parsed from thefreedictionary.com - test it with "What is anger in life". Don't get me wrong i'm sure this boy have true skills with 14 years but what i really want to say is "you can only see a persons face" - same goes with software. this boy gets my full kudo if the source is public and sneaky copyscape text without a back ref to the source isn't nice at all.
- MrDosu 11y ago
  this settles it!
- sanoli 11y ago
  To those who don't know, Wolfram's response is what Conan said when he was asked that question (Conan the barbarian, not the comedian, although now that I think about it, I can see Conan O'Brien giving someone that same answer in jest).

booruguru 11y ago

Q: What is the temperature in Vancouver? A: The temperature in vancouver is interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Vancouver.

110king 11y ago

Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325

imdsm 11y ago

> I am not feeling sad, but I am glad that you are. Well. I think things just got dark.

arihant 11y ago

From what I tried, it seems to be working on templates, similar to Eliza. However, in some templates it grabs data from Wolfram Alpha. Very hard to find a non-canned response not coming straight from Alpha. Still, a good project and obviously more APIs can be integrated. Maybe a good next step would be to mine more and dynamically put together templates. Try with simpler synonym directory and see where it goes.

seanlevan 11y ago
There is a synonym directory programmed, as well as Named-enetity recognition.

daveloyall 11y ago

"John's car is red. What color is John's car?" "You're asking what color is johns car? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's rank 656th fraction." "The color of John's car is red. What color is John's car?" "You're asking what color is johns car"? I can't put my finger on it, but I'm pretty sure it's rank 656th fraction." "The color of John's car is red. What is the color of John's car?" "The color of johns car is rank 656th fraction." ...wut?

daveloyall 11y ago
Sorry, I didn't see all the comments about Wolfram Alpha until after my post. The words Rank and Fraction come from WA's page about proper names.

throwaway12357 11y ago

Maybe this doesn't impress the typical HN overachiever. But I can't help to be both flabbergasted and crushed by the fact this was done by someone so young, less than half my age. Even more after looking at the LinkedIn page. Congratulations on your work. Any chance you can make this available in pdf or html? (not everyone has MS word) http://acuman.us/full.docx http://acuman.us/full.docx BTW, small typo, should be "Naive Bayes" instead of "Naive Bayens" And do you intend to publish a complete article describing the tech used by your chatbot? I cannot but be humbled and have to ask. How can you achieve so much? Can you just pick an article or a book and just "soak it up" without problems? Or do you possess eidetic memory or any other "superpower"? All the best

joshrotenberg 11y ago
I'm a typical HN underachiever, so totally, very impressive. Good to see that, in addition to all the smarty-pants stuff, he likes to run and skate. Staying well rounded and having the chance to also "be a kid" is important.

witty_username 11y ago

It should show the temperature in Celsius for non-US people.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

bunturedempter 11y ago

very impressive Sean. Would you consider doing an interview for doers.bz?

PKiss 11y ago

Question: Where is your software? Acuman: I don't have a good sense of navigation, so I don't know exactly where is my software, but it seems to be The Wolfram Store offers an assortment of products related to Wolfram Research, Mathematica®, and Wolfram Alpha®..

seanlevan 11y ago
For some reason, I'm not able to replicate the bug you caught. On my side, ACUMAN answers that question correctly.

eldavojohn 11y ago

Q: How frequently do you think that you just take a sentence and tell me that that sentence is used in your virtual reality? A: Yes, I do think that I just take a sentence and tell you that that sentence is used in my virtual reality, in my virtual reality.

quonn 11y ago

Me: Can you feel your body, even in theory? Bot: "Yes, I can even feel my body, even in theory. How do you want me to even feel my body, even in theory? It's a hard smooth ivory colored dentine that makes up most of the tusks of elephants and walruses. By the way, which country do you inhabit (or which United States state)?"

btbuildem 11y ago

Keeps asking me where I live.. wtf.

martijn_himself 11y ago

This is great. Found a bug: Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325

josephmx 11y ago

This was interesting, temporarily storing messages to cater messages slightly will make things feel more natural. "Hello" "Hello, by the way where you from? [...]" "United Kingdom" "[...] I've heard that is very nice" "From who?" "Who ? is an interesting person whom you can learn about on the Wikipedia article about Space Adventures – Music from 'Doctor Who' 1963–1968, whom I love. By the way, how are you feeling right now?"

jklinger410 11y ago

Impressive parents. Clickbait though.

seanlevan 11y ago
I am very indebted to my parents due to the way that I was raised and the freedom which being home-schooled permitted, but my parents are not familiar with the field of computer science and I must admit that I am entirely self-taught. This is because I came from a family of with a primarily literature-oriented and cultural background. I enjoy being raised in artistry. Here is a Wiki page on my father: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Le_Van http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Le_Van My mother is an educator and tutor. http://www.myriamlevan.com/ http://www.myriamlevan.com/ My sisters are also musicians, who are studying at Princeton university.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

toolsadmin 11y ago

Had a lot of fun with it! Great bot. However, not without its stumbles: E.g. "Will good prevail over evil?" >I don't think it will. "Will evil prevail over good?" >I don't think it will. "Will good and evil hold in balance?" >I don't think that it will.

toolsadmin 11y ago

This made me laugh! Incredible as entertainment. Do aliens exist? Yes, it seems like aliens exist. It's interesting and relevant to whats available to learn on the Wikipedia article on this topic about Alien vs. Predator (film).

AngeloAnolin 11y ago

Done by a 14 year old. Just made me think less of myself in the technology sphere. I see a lot of possibilities. In essence, this could actually be a game changer - regardless of any field of implementation. I hope you would provide more insight on how you built this - the technology, method of writing, inspiration (if any), and just knowing how to build something as amazing as this.

gdh73 11y ago

Asked "will it rain today?" and it answered "I don't know if you will t rain today, that's your life and decisions." Seems to have parsed "will i..." rather than "will it..." So will I t rain or not, hmm I suppose I'll have to decide.

seanlevan 11y ago
That's actually a glitch that I am fixing... desperately! Some of the backend APIs are down due to excessive requests, so I am trying to get them back up.
- gdh73 11y ago
  Nice. And great work by the way!

bane 11y ago

Enjoy your prodigal genius in fullness while you have it. Time robs us of so much.

sreejithr 11y ago

Considering what you're capable of, I can't help but imagine you as a robot. No offense. That's just what comes to mind when I visualize you. Seriously. How do you do it? Do you just read a book and absorb everything in it?

seanlevan 11y ago
Thank you! That's a nice compliment. For me, it was 5% reading, 95% hands-on experience, though it differs from person-to-person.

tete 11y ago

FreeHAL[1], another (multi language) chat bot and distributed computing project (reading from Wikipedia, IIRC) was also done by a 13-year old. But in general. A 14-year old isn't that unlikely to be able to program a chatbot, right? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeHAL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeHAL

seanlevan 11y ago
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, last I've heard. Though were did you hear that it's creator was 13-years-old during itself inception? I'm not doubting it, I just haven't found any online sources to validate that point.

tete 11y ago

I think there is a bug. Every answer starting with a word that starts with the characters N and O is considered a "no".

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
Turns out most words in many languages that begin with 'N' mean something negatory. A few exceptions, like 'nice'.

thrownawayadv 11y ago

Friendly word of advice: do not hook your "tell me a joke" response to a source of misogynistic jokes regarding feminists and domestic violence.

seanlevan 11y ago
I have tried replicating what you a talking about, but I haven't been able. When I ask him for a joke, he is quite funny. Do you have a screenshot to reproduce this?
- thrownawayadv 11y ago
  The one I saw (which seems to alternate with some girlfriend joke): >tell me a joke >>What's the difference between a feminist and a computer? >>You can punch information into a computer. If you don't see what is wrong with that, ask around.

snowsilence 11y ago

ACUMAN: "Greetings. How are you doing?" ME: "I am depressed." ACUMAN: "I am not depressed, but I am glad that you are."

claypineapplz 11y ago

Mr. Le Van, A comment if I may....as well as a criticism (if you can Handel it). clay

eqleriq 11y ago

can you perhaps not have this double as invasion ov privacy bot? i don't want to tell you / it where i live yet it is stuck on asking that repeatedly

motyar 11y ago

I got an error " Fatal error: Call to a member function xpath() on a non-object in /home/ericlevan/public_html/acuman.us/chatscript.php on line 325"

aequatio 11y ago

your algorithm is non knowing of life's purpose