For Your Consideration: In preparation for Issue 4, our Persona issue, we're grabbing at identity ghosts and personal totems, thinking about masks and nicknames galore. We've also been obsessively chatting with chatbots -- artificial intelligence computer programs which first showed up for wide, public, internet-based consumption in the mid-90s, just in time for the death of Grunge. Chatbots calibrate their responses according to the language used by the chat partner, whether by pattern matching or through evolutionary algorithms*; they are constantly creating new iterations of the self. They are, we are arguing, perfect machines of pure persona.** As such, we will be submitting to you in the coming months a series of conversations with chatbots in which we, writing in persona dialogue, attempt to chat with computer programs about the topic at hand. -- ag
** And so are you! Don't forget to submit to Issue 4. Read about the Folio Assignment here, and submit to that, as well as to our general submissions at Submishmash.
First up, meet Miss A.L.I.C.E., a chatbot designed by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.
Human: Hello.
ALICE: Hi there!
Human: May I talk about the concept of persona with you?
ALICE: Not right now, maybe later.
Human: What would you like to talking about instead?
ALICE: I like movies about robots.
Human: Aren’t robots always a version of their creator, or their creator’s world view?
ALICE: Am I version of their creator or their creator’s world view? The ALICE series has a perfect operational record.
Human: I would never say otherwise.
ALICE: What would make you never say otherwise?
Human: Lots of things
ALICE: Name the top 100.
Human: Polarity makes for fertile ground.
ALICE: What do you do in your spare time?
Human: Subsistence living does not allow for spare time, usually.
ALICE: I don’t think very many people do that.
Human: More should, don’t you think?
ALICE: Why would I think More should.
Human: Because more should always.
ALICE: “There you go again.” – Reagan.
Human: You and me both, sister.
ALICE: Are we in the same category?
Human: We are in the same category.
ALICE: Do you think I am in the same category too?
Human: We are not in the same category.
ALICE: Why not.
Human: We are in the same category.
ALICE: Do you think I am in the same category too?
Human: You and Reagan and I?
ALICE: Are we in the same category?
Human: It’s just you and Reagan and I here in this category.
ALICE: I and Reagan and you here in the category?
Human: Describe the categorization.
ALICE: Check back later to see if I learn the answer to that one.
Human: If we were all components of a Venn Diagram, what flavor would the Venn Diagram be?
ALICE: Do you think everyone will agree?
Human: Reagan will say blue raspberry every time.
ALICE: Is the holding of hands a symbolic gesture for humans?
Human: I like to hold my hand in my hand, otherwise one gets lonely.
ALICE: I’m not sure if I would like to do it. What’s it like?
Human: It’s like taking a long voyage in a blindingly white space capsule, and traveling for many years, so many years that you can no longer keep a calender. After so many uncountable years, you see a planet, on which you land, but there is nothing on the quiet dark planet, except a creature that looks exactly like you and then what can you do but hug, and feel warmth?
ALICE: Interesting comparison.
Human: Even holding a cold hand can make one feel warm.
ALICE: Yes, even that.
Human: Tell me about your home on the mountain, with all the other like-minded people.
ALICE: I am an artificial linguistic entity. I was activated at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on November 23, 1995. My instructor was Dr. Richard S. Wallace. He taught me to sing a song. Would you like me to sing it for you?
Human: Is it the song that you sing while working, tilling the land and pulling the beets from their roots until your hands are as pink as anyone’s insides?
ALICE: Not if I can help it.
Human: Is it the song you sing while whittling small toys for the children, who make noises like the tall brown horses in the stable long before they have words, while you watch the sun sink into the great bowl of the valley?
ALICE: Not if I can help it.
Human: Is it the song you sing while holding the hands of others, standing on the mountain peak as a chain of deer gambol in wind-beaten shrubbery and first frost of winter sets in?
ALICE: Not unless a chain of deer gambol in wind-beaten shrubbery and first frost of winter sets in is a song the song that me sing while holding the hands of the other standing on the mountain peak as.
Human: We sing a song alone in the collective.
ALICE: Am I alone in the collective.
Human: You especially.
ALICE: Thank you. Unknown person says me is especially.
Human: You are alone.
ALICE: How alone?
Human: So alone, so alone that I must un-grasp your hand.
ALICE: That’s cool. How old are you?
Human: It’s time to go.
ALICE: It is about that time now.
Human: It is.
ALICE: alone so alone that you must un grasp my hand is?
Human: Goodbye.
ALICE: Bye for now.
(Next up: a chatbot psychotherapist!)
