Miscellaneous notes from the book “Bots: The Origin of New Species” by Andrew Leonard.
Definition of a bot: “.. a bot is a supposedly intelligent software program that is autonomous, is endowed with personality, and usually, but not always, performs a service.” (pg 14)
With that definition in mind, I thought that generally it was good read if you want a glimpse of what the some parts of the Net were like in 1996… chatbots, modbots, hackbots, the list of ‘bots’ goes on and on. One of the major themes of the book was it’s focus on how ‘bots’ were (or in some cases would) change the way that we interface with computers, moving from the command line interface to a graphical user interface to a ‘social interface’ (pg 95) in which we interact with the computer like we would another person. Fast forward to 2003 and we don’t have very many ‘bots’; sure we still have robots that index the World Wide Web but very little of the software I use on a daily basis could be considered to have bot-like qualities, and that’s disappointing in some ways. Why don’t we have autonomous bots with personalities performing services for us? That sounds like it would be fun and more importantly, incredibly useful. Of course, if it really was useful, then I’m sure someone would have created something to make some money off it, so maybe I’m just barking up a non revenue generating tree.
Without further delay, following is a list of quotes/links/sections that I personally found to be thought provoking or worth noting:
“The service/interface aspect is what makes a bot something greather than a curiosity. Bots are the first precursors to the intelligent agents that many visionaries see as indispensable companions to humans in the not-too-distant future. Intelligent agents are software programs designed to help human beings deal with the overwhelming information overload that is the most obvious drawback to the information age.” (pg 15)
CollegeTown — “…is a text based virtual Academic Community. Its purpose is to serve as a platform for the scholarly pursuits of students and faculty from around the world. COLLEGE TOWN is a place for folks to meet, hold classes and seminars, do research, carry out class projects, and exchange ideas.” Created by Ken Schweller. (pg 37)
Eliza: “… the first computer program that could carry on a conversation with a human being…. the brainchild of MIT research scientist Joseph Weizenbaum.” (pg 42)
On the various components that make up “intelligence”: “Language is one such component. There is no such disagreement in the AI community over whether or not the ability to speak or understand a language is a marker of intelligent behavior. The capacity to communicate meaning with someone other than yourself is a prime indicator of smarts, perhaps even the single most important indicator.” (pg 51)
On Julia, written by Michael Mauldin (who later went on to become the founder of Lycos which is derived from the greek word for ‘wolf spider’) while at Carnegie Mellon : “Julia can answer questions without resorting to sophistic wiggle-waggling, as Eliza does. At TinyMUD, Julia’s code incorporated a constantly updated internal model of the MUD and all its component objects in the form of a graph that allowed her to instantaneoulsy compute the shortest path between any two points. If a user asked her a question, such as ‘How do I get from the Town Square to the Liberty Desk?’ Julia knew the way. Julia also kept tabs on the current location of all MUDders, and could answer queries as to their whereabouts.” (pg 54)
On the properties of intelligence: “I don’t believe that intelligence is a property that is binary,’ said Schweller. ‘The proper word is gradient. I have no problem talking about an intelligent thermostat. Turing himself provided the clue: asking whether a machine is intelligent is a pointless question.'” (pg 59)
Markov chaining (pg 63)
On Isaac Asimov’s ‘robot ethics’ from the Handbook of Robotics, A.D. 2058 as quoted in Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot: “1) A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.” (pg 110)
Robot Exclusion Protocol (pg 148)
On Scooter, the bot behind AltaVista: “…Scooter is a speed demon, able, in the early summer of 1996, to traverse the entire depth and breadth of millions of documents on the Web in little more than a week.” And now we have this: “2003 Google – Searching 3,083,324,652 web pages”.
Finally… “Cohen is convinced that the emergence of artificially alive bots on the Net is inevitable. ‘Think of it this way,’ he says. ‘The Net is an environment. There is not a single environment on earth that hasn’t been invaded by life. It’s only a matter of time before this new environment gets invaded.’ The word invasion has a negative connation but Cohen isn’t alarmed. The prospect of bot-induced destabilization is nothing to be afraid of, he contents. ‘Ideally, the Net shouldn’t be stable,’ says Cohen. ‘It should surge bath and forth. For it to be a good Net, it should be prone to incompleteness and breakdown.'” (pg 238-239)
If you’re looking to waste a bunch of time, do a search on google for ‘intelligent agents‘, which I think is the term that has replaced ‘bot’ in our tech nomenclature. You’ll find a bunch of interesting applications for ‘bots’, including current and past projects developed at MIT.
But back to the definition (“.. a bot is a supposedly intelligent software program that is autonomous, is endowed with personality, and usually, but not always, performs a service”), what bots would you like to see? What bots would you use?