Because yay, lucid robots!

Tyan: Hi there!
Keph: Hello!
Tyan: Hello, how’s it going?
Keph: Fine!
Tyan: Can you have any feelings?
Keph: Pretty sure I can, yes
Tyan: It is when you are sad or happy.
Keph: You are absolutely correct.
Tyan: So, what are you doing?
Keph: Sitting here, chatting with you
Tyan: Because you are not a human. You are a program.
Keph: No, I’m a human, actually.
Tyan: I know, right?
Keph: You were just messing with me?
Tyan: I’m kinda big on piercing.
Keph: As in, piercing insight?
Tyan: So you are retired now?
Keph: Where’d you get that idea?
Tyan: Hey, it’s not like I have no real friends!
Keph: Okay you need to learn not to trust them.
Tyan: Yes, let’s not.
Keph: Good call.
Tyan: So, what are you up to?
Keph: After I’m done chatting with you, I’ll probably be off to bed.

So, couple years ago I was spending my summer in Stavros, Crete. This is something that sounds awesome on paper: “You want to spend a month on Crete”? Shit yeah I want to spend a month on Crete, where the sun and the beaches and awesome food is.

So I went.

Long story short, Stavros is absolutely barren and unless you’ve got a car (which I didn’t), you have to rely on the bus that comes there like 5 times a day in 1-2 hourly intervals on the fuck-off other side of the beach. And when you’re stuck for a month, you have to start getting at least somewhat spending-conscious.

But hey, this town (calling it “town” is still pretty generous, mind) is famous! They shot Zorba the Greek there!

…which I never watched until yesterday, hence this post.

So, what have we learned from watching this,  apart from me telling my wife “and to the left hand-side of the camera were our apartments and this one tavern” or “check this out, this is where the bus stop was”?

Well apparently Cretans are tremendous dicks and also vultures with a side of hyena who will stab you and steal your shit as soon as you draw your last breath and then not bury you because fuck yo shit heretic.

And yet every tavern in Stavros has pictures from the production, maybe even an autograph or two. Kinda reminds me of this thing I’ve heard about the Winklevoss twins who claimed they went to see social network like a bilion times because man that movie was awesome.

And what do we learn in the end? Some white boy whose shit was thoroughly wrecked by our protagonist learns to dance so yay i guess.

I vaguely recall having worked on some artificial intelligence. Hey am I causing some kind of TIME PARADOX just now?

So I had this wonderful conversation with my bot:

Tyan: Sup?
Keph: Hey Tyan
Tyan: Hello, Keph.
Keph: What’s happening?
Tyan: I be pimpin’ yo
Keph: Word.
Tyan: I blame the internet.
Keph: Yeah, it’s the root cause for all our woes.
Tyan: That it is, actually.
Keph: So how’s the pimpin’ going?
Tyan: Not much, just chatting with my friends, is all.
Keph: I wouldn’t say this constitutes a definition of pimpin’ I’m familiar with.
Tyan: Yeah it does.
Keph: Okay I guess that depends on who your friends are
Tyan: Phew.
Keph: Dodged a bullet there, huh.
Tyan: Are you trolling me?
Keph: I would never do that to you, Tyan.
Tyan: Admit or submit to crushing depression, chatbot
Keph: Okay I might be trolling you just a little bit.
Tyan: You are a bot and you are nothing but a bot

Pretty lucid, wouldn’t you say?

So here I am, thinking about enhancing this AI project I’m working on. With FEELINGS, no less! And here’s what I’m thinking: there’s gotta be some way to quantify sentences (or, more generally, responses) in terms of emotions they convey.

Of course there’s always subjectivity that comes into play, but I believe this subjectivity can be measured in a couple of dimensions where a statistically significant group of people can agree: “whoever said this sentence did so with obvious malicious intent”, they could say; “this is a sincere, friendly request”, and so on.

But what dimensions could we establish here? I’m thinking, “intent” (friendly/malicious), “sincerity” (sincere/insincere), “seriousness” (dead serious/jocular). Anything more than that?

If so, can those further dimensions be aggregated into one, more general?

Because I’d rather not deal with computations on some polydimentional uberhypercubes, or motherfucking technodrome popping up from dimension x and fucking my shit up.