Chat with a Robot!

In accordance with our classroom discussion on the nature of the robot and Steve Reich’s “Dolly” music video, I thought it would be interesting to explore the character of one of the most well known and universally accessible robotic celebrities on the internet: Cleverbot! This chatterbot was created by a British programmer, Rollo Carpenter, and is designed to learn from real people in order to stimulate authentic human interaction in the form of online chat—quite the Borgmann-esque paradox.

By storing information from past conversations, Cleverbot’s personality seems to evolve over time. However, this growth fails to demonstrate maturity or increased academic proficiency. According to one caustic entry on Urban Dictionary, “it is [a] horribly failed system, who is racist, sexist, [and] stupid [. . .]. It is understandable though, it DOES learn from real people, and that’s what real people truly are”. Indeed, I have noticed over the past few months that the site owners have had to add an obligatory warning to parents that reads: “the AI knows many topics - use ONLY WITH OVERSIGHT.” Already, something as simple and seemingly innocent as this chatterbot has been corrupted, which seems to verify the fear the when placed in the wrong hands, robotic technologies could do more harm than good. In addition, as Cleverbot continues to increase in popularity, it is becoming more disturbing to me that children and adults alike are forgoing relationships with real human beings to engage in conversation with a robot. It is interesting to consider that there might be psychological motivations for this choice; to begin with, unlike some friends and family, Cleverbot will never ignore a person.

Regardless of its flaws, including its tendency to ask the user to marry it, Cleverbot occasionally surprises me with its philosophical and witty conversation. For instance, at one point, I asked it what the meaning of life was, and it replied that “[t]he meaning of life is to search for the meaning of life. A paradox.” Of course, its next statement informed me that Michael Jackson was my father, but the point is that there are moments when it really does feel like the user is talking to a real person who is capable of metacognition. Also, Cleverbot acts insulted when you call it a robot and will argue that it is indeed human. I remember on one occasion when I was playing around with the program, I asked it how it could consider itself a human, and it responded, “I think therefore I am.”

If you have not yet been introduced to Cleverbot, you can do so by visiting this website: http://www.cleverbot.com/.