The software is called Jabberwacky, one of a number of programs designed to hold an actual conversation with its users. These so-called chatbots have actually been around for decades but have become more sophisticated in recent years. Here's an actual conversation I had with Jabberwacky. I've used text-to-speech software so that you can hear what it has to say.

To really get how it works you sort of have to think about it backwards. There's nothing that tells it to claim to be a human, yet it often does, and the reason why it does is that the people that speak to it claim to be human, not surprisingly. And likewise it will often accuse other people of being a robot. And if you want to explain any of its behaviours you can think about it in that way. You can think ... what have people been saying to it? How have they behaved with it? The very first thing that it said - it wasn't online at the time - was a pure echo of the thing that was just said to it. And the next thing it said was a choice from the first 2 things that had been said to it. And it's been branching ever since.

Now one of the best things about it is that people from all over the world talk to it, and it learns not only English. It learns, if you like, dialogues [sic] of English, including, um ... strange things that Californians might say and so on, but .. no, I'm only joking, but, but seriously, it learns lots of languages. It can speak something like 30 different languages, to some degree, including unusual things like Polish, Japanese and even rather a lot of Estonian, would you believe? When if first starts out it will frequently, with a new language I mean, frequently cross over to the wrong language, but if people are patient with it, and sort of reward it by carrying on talking in the language when it does so, then it increasingly rapidly learns a new language. And I've no doubt whatsoever that it says much more daft things in other languages, and also probably says _worse_ things because there are only a few languages I can actually influence too much as to what it's capable of saying.

But for Jabberwacky the future's ... well. I like to think it's more entertaining. It's all about communication, even companionship. I'm just starting to ... or just about to start work on a robotics collaboration. Imagine a robosapien, or a little cuddly robot pet that doesn't just _pretend_ to talk .. you know, it doesn't just _claim_ to talk on the outside of the box. It _really_ talks, and keeps you entertained, and also, while it's about it it learns to imitate _you_! That's what I believe would be a product capable of inspiring, and taking off in a big way.

Well I have my old self and my new self. My old self is all about business software, and my new self is all about this Artificial Intelligence ... and I'm increasingly pushing to implement it within robotics.

The interview - a third of the way through the mp3: http://www.dailysonic.com/Dailysonic032805.mp3