Briefs

Washington Post (09/06/02) reports on the progress of "chatterbots" such as Active Buddy's SmarterChild, a bot that can "talk" to people via real-time text messages and answer questions by tapping into the Web's vast informational resources.

Created by engineer Timothy Kay, SmarterChild began popping up in instant messaging systems last summer. Since then, close to 9 million people have talked to it.

A few such bots have progressed to the point that they can pass the some version of the Turing test and convince people they are actually human.

See full story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43363-2002Sep5.html

Talk to SmarterChild at www.smarterchild.com