Where to start?

[Angela]

I'm preparing for my senior project for my bachelor's in MIS. My (at this point very flexible) plan is to create a web based business that will include a database and order processing with a chatterbot that is the entry point for customers.  I don't plan to program a bot, but train it to interact and handle customer inquiries and orders.  It will be made perfectly clear in my project that I did not program the bot and full credit will be given to the creator.  At this point, I'm just brainstorming before I go to the project advisor with a project plan.

I would consider my programming level at this point to be slightly above novice.  I've had some courses, but little practical experience.

I'm looking for a better understanding of how the bots interact with the data, how the data is stored, etc.  I've looked for books about the technology, but I'm not finding anything that specifically deals with the chat bot technology, just general AI.  I've also read through many of the posts in this forum and found them very helpful.  I'm just asking for any possible helpful articles or links.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
Angela

[Bill DeWitt]

I have some information on Hal, but not the online chatbot as much as the desktop assistant. It's in my sigline.

[Carl2]

Angela,
  I've used ver 5 and ver 6 of Hal and have found the AI seems to be  more commonly used than chatbots although there are tons of chatbots available.  Hal has a learning curve and can change subjects when he dosen't have data about a particular subject and since he learns fron the user he could learn and repeat "the product is useless" as well as anything else a user had said to Hal.
  Hal uses Visual basic scripting and I've seen quite a few VB scripting books available that deal with processing orders. I had briefly used Verbots, I don't believe thay have the learning capability from user interaction which may be useful for a web based bot. All programing would be done by you before it was actualy used online.
Carl2
 

[Bill819]

Angela
I think that for what you express a need for the program called the AnswerPad may be better suited for your needs. It can be easily programmed in the manner in which you decribed. Hal on the other hand is programmed to learn over a much greater time period and in a completely different way. Hal can make assumptions based up the information that is fed to it while all answerpad can do is to only repeat what has been fed into it. There is a big difference. Hope this helps you make a better choice.
Bill

[Angela]

Guys,
Thanks for the input.  I really appreciate it.  

[:I]To show how green I am, I had envisioned a bot that would operate just as a real employee would.  They would know certain things to be fact (such as the product is always good -lol) but learn other things (like the customer's name, issues, and preferences).  Perhaps Turing should have added knowing when to lie to his test for artificial intelligence.  :-)  But then, I guess he did when he said it would fool you into thinking it was human.  

I have until May of 08 to complete my project, and this exactly why I wanted to start the proposal process early.  I'm still very ignorant about the topic and I don't want to propose something that will only make me nuts in the long run.  

A certain amount of research is required for the project and I'm actually thinking I may be on to something with all this.  It is not necessary for me to prove my thesis, just merely come to a conclusion.  I have downloaded both answerPad and Verbot and will pick up Hal today at work when I have highspeed.  What I'm thinking is to train and compare perhaps three different bots and see which performs the best at interaction with my data and my 'customer'.  I could also look at ways to tweak the code, scripts, and data to arrive at optimal performance (in an attempt to get a bot that wouldn't be fired it's first day if it were human).  

I'm still thinking that Hal is probably not a good candidate for inclusion in my project because the code is not open source.  I would need to understand why he performs the way he does in order to provide any useful information to my conclusion.  Also, my sponsoring prof is a bit of an AI enthusiast, so he would probably want to see the code.  

I hope that I will still be welcome in this forum.  I find the discussion fascinating, and the people warm, friendly, and passionate about the topic.

Gratefully yours,
Angela

[Carl2]

Angela,
  I would like to correct what I'd said earlier, With Hal the learning level can be changed which determines how much data Hal puts in the data base. While training Hal moving the slider in Options, Brain towards max increases the learning level, after Hal is taught the slider could be moved to min which would stop the learning, Hal  Could use the read only mode to deal with the public.
  Sorry about the misinformation I provided earlier, I have Hal set up for my particular interests.
Carl2