COP2500 Assignment 14
Deliverables:
To complete this assignment you must perfom three tasks --
- Use the language processing software listed on this page.
- Answer the questions below by editing this file.
- Turn in your HTML document to your instructor.
Introduction:
As we discussed in class, natural language processing is something that computers
are currently horrible at. The purpose of this lab is to give you some insight
as to how people attempt to allow natural language human-computer interaction, and
also to show you how limited the techniques currently are. Ideally, computers
should be able to pass the "Turing test", meaning you should not be able to
tell the difference between chatting with a computer and chatting with a human
over a long period of time.
Fortune Cookie:
Fortune cookie programs are a simple way to produce random sentences and are
arguably the most basic form of natural language interaction computers can provide.
Note that you cannot talk to the computer, it can only talk to you. Fortune cookies
work by randomly selecting fragments of sentences from lists and concatenating
them to become complete sentences. This provides a pretty quick way of obtaining
a large number of sentences, but there is no natural language processing going on.
You can easily add to the fortune cookie program by editing the JavaScript
program at the end of this file.
Questions:
1. Does the fortune cookie pass the "Turing test" in your opinion? Why or why not?
2. Does the fortune cookie understand what it is saying? Why or why not?
Chomsky-bot
The Chomsky-bot is a type of fortune cookie program designed to mimic the writing
of Noam Chomsky, a noted linguist. Chomsky was not a computer scientist, but performed
research in natural languages. Early computer scientistsfound that his work had direct
applications to computer programming languages, formal languages, and automated natural
language processing. Being good computer scientists, they stole his
work (ok they didn't steal it, they gave him full credit) and wer able to use his language
classification systems as the basis for describing how powerful programming languages are
in terms of computability.
Read the wisdom of the Chomsky-bot .
Questions:
1. Does the Chomskybot pass the "Turing test" in your opinion? That is, do the paragraphs
seem meaningful? Do they seem like they were written by humans? Why or why not?
2. Does the Chomskybot understand what it is saying? Why or why not?
Alice/Eliza
Eliza was a computer program written by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960's. Eliza was
designed to mimic the speech of a Rogerian psychiatrist. Alice is an updated
version of Eliza designed to talk about more general subjects. Both of them select
key words from your sentences and use them to generate responses. Certain words
will cause sentence structures that often echo your words back to you (Eliza often says
"How do you feel about ... " and then fills in the blank). Talk to either one
of them, then answer the questions.
Talk to Eliza ,
or talk to Alice .
Questions:
1. Does Eliza/Alice pass the "Turing test" in your opinion? Why or why not?
2. Give an example of Eliza/Alice sounding rational.
3. Give an example of Eliza/Alice sounding not-rational.
2. Does Eliza/Alice understand what it is saying? Why or why not?