Hello,
A science fair project on Artificial Intelligence sounds great! It sounds like you're a C++ programmer. If you search the web on "natural language" or "chatterbot" or "artificial intelligence" or "Turing Test" you should be able to come up with a lot of simple chatterbots, some of which might have source code. Especially look for the early versions of "Eliza the Psychiatrist"! This program did a LOT with very, very small amounts of code!
If you're determined to work in C++ and can't find anything in that language, you could also study the VBS script files for UltraHal (they have the .uhp file extensions, with names like "hal4.uhp"). I would think this would give you a model for ideas. The Visual Basic Scripting files control all of Hal's other activities, and of course they're "open," human-readable with any text editor such as WordPad or Word.
For something that would be interactive with the judges and the public, why not set up your own version of the "Turing Test"? In addition to your report and your simple demo, you could set up two or more chatterbots, and have the public and the judges interact with them, and "score" them on which one was more entertaining and/or human! You could also report on the official Turing Test sponsored by Loebner, and the $100,000 prize that no one has won yet!
Good luck on your project!
Sincerely,
Don
Don Ferguson
traininginc@cortrapar.com
www.cortrapar.com
