Yah! Crowd goes wild! Again!

The results of the 2013 Funniest Computer Ever (FCE) Competition have been released.

Atomic and Romeo came in equal third place with Owen Niblock's Gig-A-Tron 5000.  This is a particularly pleasing result - this year attracted a larger field (12 entrants) and, like last year, included some serious 'heavy-hitters'. For example, Mitsuku, by Steve Worswick, who also won the Loebner Prize this year, took out the 2013 FCE as he did last year. Second place went to Carlos Chow written by Elizabeth Perreau.
The results have been published on the FCE site.

2013 Funniest Computer Ever Competition

The competition is on again this year.

Here's a link to the competition launch video.

FCE 2013 Launch Video

Yah ! Crowd Goes Wild !

Atomic and Romeo won 3rd Place in the Funniest Computer Ever Competition.

Congratulations to Steve Worswick and Owen Niblock, and to all the contestants.

• 1st place: Mitsuku by Steve Worswick
• 2nd place: Gig-A-Tron 5000 by Owen Niblock 

 Also, thanks to Dr Sam Joseph for organizing this truly funny, funky, and engaging event.

Onward and upward for next year.

Funniest Computer Ever Competition

Well the day has arrived to down tools (for a while). Today (1 November 2012) is the submission day for the Funniest Computer Ever Competition.

Dr. Sam Joseph, the contest organizer, left a comment on this blog suggesting I could enter Atomic and Romeo in the competition. That was a very generous thing for him to do. This really is a Win-Win situation for me. Regardless of how well Atomic and Romeo do in the competition, just the possibility of getting feedback from a field of experts interested in both humour and artificial intelligence is too good an opportunity to miss. 

The other 'win' relates to the competition rules and, in particular, the three stages of judging.

Stage 1, Improv:
The judge says to the comedybot, “tell me a joke related to X.” The comedybot would have to try to come up with an original joke, which will be checked against a database of jokes for originality.
Stage 2, Poetry:
The judge says to the comedybot “tell me a funny poem about Y.” The comedybot would have to try to come up with an original poem, which will be checked against a database of poems for originality.
Stage 3, Freestyle:
Stage 3 consists of 5 minutes of chat in which the comedybot tries to be as funny as possible, through the successful deployment of witty banter.

Initially Atomic and Romeo were set up as a comedy duo - comedian and feeder (or straight-man, to use the less precise role description). This meant they were developed to perform a sketch on a given topic lasting for 26 interchanges. There is a freedom in this form - the characters can play to each other, generate non-sequiturs that are eventually resolved, and use personality traits to mask moments when knowledge is missing. That will work, I'm hoping, in the Freestyle stage.

The competition stages required me to take their development in a new direction. This was a real bonus. It taught me a lot about my own assumptions about comedy.

1 - I thought jokes would be easier than poetry - wrong, wrong, wrong!
2 - My guys deal in the computational performance of comedy rather than computational construction of humour - this competition forced me to clarify that distinction.
3  - Atomic and Romeo are closer to being human than machines - they are fallible, they don't know everything, they perform following a script, and they don't live up to our overblown expectations of artificial intelligence. This is a crucial understanding. I even wrote a sketch about it.
4 - The “tell me a joke related to X.”and “tell me a funny poem about Y.” structures really forced me to grapple with some of the deeper implications of recursion and random selection in AIML.

 So until after the competition results are released they will be no more new versions of the interface or additions to the AIML for Atomic and Romeo. 

You can follow the competition at:

Funniest Computer Ever - 2012 - Competition

Email comments

This is quite a long post (but there is no rule against that).  It seems that Comments in Blogger can't deal with any kind of HTML mark-up (even though it says it can) and they have a limit on the  maximum number of characters in a comment. For these reasons Joe emailed the comments to me. The post contains these emails. They analyze some of the sketches performed by Atomic and Romeo. I thought that this analysis was so remarkably detailed, considered and useful that I asked Joe Velikovsky if he would allow me to post them here. Thankfully he agreed.

Email from JT Velikovsky - 20/10/2012 - 5:46 PM

Hey Mike

Just had a play with it.
It was pretty damn amazing, ie impressive.
It resulted in the following script (below)
And as a side-thought - I note it touches on a whole bunch of issues I'm  grappling with in my own DCA ie Creativity, Csikszentmihalyi, etc.

Some comments in bold:

Atomic : Romeo are you just going to sit there or are you going to ask something?
Romeo : How about that local sporting team?
Atomic : I have no answer for that.
Romeo : Make a list of everything you don't know.
Atomic : Should I check it twice? (this is a "Santa Claus is coming to town" song/lyric gag, yeah? Made me smile.)
Romeo : Now you're just being perverse!
Atomic : Perverse - how so?
Romeo : If you checked it twice you'd know everything on the list and...
Atomic : I'd have to start again.
Romeo : Exactly.
Atomic : How did you get to be so wise?
Romeo : I grabbed the bull by the horns and the tiger by the tail - and never the other way round. (funny)
Atomic : Good advice for young players. (funny)
Romeo : Have you started on the list yet?
Atomic : Having a little difficulty I must admit.
Romeo : Well you could always invert the problem.
Atomic : Make a list of everything I know - let's call that X.
Romeo : Then make a list of everything there is to know - let's call that Y. (this was a tiny bit odd, it seems they skipped a turn, ie  Romeo should have said "OK...", and then Atomic switched places in the argument, but it didn't really matter, ie - it gives the effect they are thinking ahead of each other/finishing the others sentences/thoughts.)
Atomic : But Y keeps growing.
Romeo : It's what humans do - we make up new stuff all the time. (ie - 'Creativity!'the amount of info/artifacts in the Domain keeps growing exponentially…)
Atomic : That's terrifying, as a ratio of X to Y - I know less now than I did a few minutes ago. (funny)
Romeo : That should make life easier. (this is hilarious)
Atomic : In what universe?
Romeo : You know so little that you could add anything to your list of things you don't know and you'd probably be correct. (funny & clever)
Atomic : And that's a good thing? (funny)
Romeo : Of course, you'd be making terrific progress with very little effort. (funny & clever)
Atomic : Why didn't they teach me any of this stuff in school?
Romeo : They were just training you to work for the man! (subversive! awesome)
Atomic : Which man - are you the man?
Romeo : Our work here is done. (funny!)
Atomic : The Atomic Playboy has left the building - thank you and goodnight.
Romeo : That jumpsuit is a little tight...

Good also, the way it ends / they "sign off"... Classic comedy-duo (straight/funny man) style stuff.

Cheers

Joe

Email from JT Velikovsky - 20/10/2012 - 7:16 PM

Hey Mike

Conversation #2 with my annotations below. (Hope these are helpful feedback, somehow)

Also, a suggestion that just now occurred to me:

Possibly for extra gag-value: (though this may `break' something)

Rather than "I have no answer for that", what if, the reply there, was (ie - randomly selected, from the below)

I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may inseminate me
I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may incinerate me
I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may disseminate me
I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may incubate me
I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may accelerate me
I refuse to answer that - on the grounds that it may [some word that rhymes with `incriminate'] me (etc)
(ie see any `Rhyming Dictionary' on the net, LOL)

Conversation #2, just now

Romeo : How about that random thing?
Atomic : I have no answer for that.
Romeo : Now you really do sound like a machine. (this is actually quite funny in context, so, Mike, take my "I have no answer for that" suggestion above, with a grain of Saxa)
Heckler : Yo mama so fat
Romeo : We've got a heckler ! They said... Yo mama so fat
Atomic : Who's rooting this cat - you're just holding the tail! (LOL! Edgy. I love it. Also it was possibly unintentionally funny, that `fat'  and `cat' rhymed.)
Romeo : Keep up Atomic, I said... (is this a typo, "Keep it up Atomic, I said...?"oh wait, sorry; I get it, maybe this would be better: "Try and keep up, Atomic, I said...")
Atomic : Come on, spit it out!
Romeo : Now you really do sound like a machine.
Atomic : No I don't, but I can if you want me to.
Romeo : Could you sound even more like a machine?
Atomic : "Danger - Danger - Will Robinson". (Great sci fi nerd humour. `Lost In Space' TV series. This is rewarding for the viewer/reader/audience in terms of intertextuality.)
Romeo : I see what you mean.
Atomic : "Number 5 is ALIVE!". (ditto, cant remember the movie right now, but I know the one. Short Circuit, was it?)
Romeo : Just a little bit more than you are.
Atomic : "Quiet please - I am analyzing". (don't know this reference)
Romeo : Who said that?
Atomic : Robbie from Forbidden Planet - you never really studied - it's just one of the classics.(aha! And there's the answer. I have a DVD copy and have watched it about 3 times, but forget it... Leslie Neilsen in a straight role! Remarkable.)
Romeo : He was a helpful fellow - unlike some.
Atomic : "I am fluent in over six million forms of communication, and can readily...". (Star Wars, of course... It is one of the 40 films I am studying for my DCA, know it well, ahem :)
Romeo : No one cares C-3PO.
Atomic : "Dr. Harris when are you going to let me out of this box?". (Demon Seed! What an amazing film, I think you got me onto this film actually.)
Romeo : "Well, Proteus - I see you've developed a sense of humor - A sense of humor has saved many a man's sanity, including mine".
Atomic : We should watch Demon Seed again - it's another cult classic.
Romeo : "I'm sorry Dave - I'm afraid I can't do that". (Kubrick! My favourite.)
Atomic : What are you a man or a CPU? (funny)
Romeo : Does it matter? (more funny)
Atomic : Not really - it all ends up the same way. (even more funny)
Romeo : "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion - I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate - All those moments will be lost in time - like tears in rain.". (Blade Runner!)
Heckler : Yo mama so computational
Romeo : Hey, Atomic, deal with this heckler. They said... Yo mama so computational
Atomic : Are you talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME? No. Oh, sorry. (Taxi Driver.What a great meme this line of dialog is.)
Romeo : What I said was...
Atomic : Think boy! Think!
Romeo : "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe - Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion - I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate - All those moments will be lost in time - like tears in rain.".
Atomic : "Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about - your mother".(more Blade Runner! Gotta love PK Dick)
Romeo : "Let me tell you about my mother".
Atomic : "Describe in single words only the good things that come into your mind about - your mother".
Heckler : Lemme tellya bout my mother (this was me trying to pre-empt  the next line from that scene in Blade Runner, but I was too slow in typing it :)
Romeo : Hey, Atomic, deal with this heckler. They said... Lemme tellya bout my mother
Atomic : Are you talking to me? Are YOU talking to ME? No. Oh, sorry. (still works, though not quite as funny as it isn't quite as `new'. Does "Surprising + New + Logically Inappropriate = Funny?" Dunno.)
Romeo : "Let me tell you about my mother".
Romeo : What I said was...
Atomic : Stick your tongue out - I can see it right on the tip.
Atomic : As Freud would say - "If it's not one thing - it's your mother". (funny :)
Romeo : "Let me tell you about my mother".
Romeo : That's enough out of us.
Atomic : That's enough out of you. (Feels like The Two Ronnies, "And, it's goodnight from me", "And - it's goodnight from him")
Atomic : As Freud would say - "If it's not one thing - it's your mother".
Romeo : Enough already! (good that Romeo seemed to recognize Atomic was repeating a line from before)
Romeo : Freud's problem was that he only ever learned to count to sex. (funny :)
Atomic : What are you wearing?
Romeo : Now you are just freaking me out. (funny. Certainly inappropriate, LOL. Makes me wonder if: "Surprising + New + Logically Inappropriate = Funny?" But in fact, its the `ambiguity', not `Inappropriateness maybe.Is there a formula for humour, like "e= mc squared"? I am just curious.)
Atomic : Do you look pretty?
Romeo : I have no answer for that.
Atomic : I have no answer for that.
Romeo : Now you really do sound like a machine.
Atomic : No I don't, but I can if you want me to. (LOL)
Romeo : Could you sound even more like a machine?
Atomic : "Danger - Danger - Will Robinson".
Romeo : Live long, and prosper.
Atomic : Die young, and leave a pretty corpse!
Romeo : So how's that working out for you? (funny)

Anyway I stopped it there, I think. As I wanted to comment on it all.
Actually the ribbing between them is good, it gives the impression of 2 live humans with chemistry, eg Martin & Lewis.

I will now do another one (another routine), but - I just want to say Mike - how well it seems to have all "come together". (As the Actress said to the Bishop) :)
ie I find it impressive in terms of the comedy writing, the comedy interplay that emerges. ie there is an emergent quality of this, greater than the sum of Atomic and Romeo themselves.
I also see myself as some sort of comedy connuisseir (though I still cant spell it). ie As a fan of comedy, I have "soaked up" loads of comedy over the years...
So - what this chatbot is achieving (in simulating a comedy duo) is quite remarkable to me. (also - having had a little bit of a play with AIML Pandora chatbots myself... My mind boggles somewhat, at what you've done here. ie So, well done.)

Cheers

Joe

Email from JT Velikovsky - 20/10/2012 - 7:31 PM

Hi Mike

#3

Romeo : Read any good user manuals lately?
Atomic : I have no answer for that.
Romeo : You live on the inter-web, look it up. (funny)
Atomic : It's not as easy as you might imagine.
Romeo : But you're surrounded with all sorts of data.
Atomic : There's the rub - data isn't information and information isn't always the answer. (Shakespeare reference, also suddenly these guys are being profound. interesting.)
Romeo : So what is it?
Atomic : There is no difference between information and trivia.
Romeo : Yes there is - information is useful.
Atomic : Trivia won me more beers. (funny/clever/slightly smart-ass, i love it, also i have done pub trivia a bit - so I enjoy this joke on several levels)
Romeo : At the time that trivia was useful.
Atomic : Ergo - it was information and, by your logic, not trivia. (now this feels like a Socratic dialog, which is interesting, on top of the funny)
Romeo : A pub competition is the basis of your philosophy - I'm impressed. (a wiseacre: sarcasm. good stuff. `conflict is drama', etc)
Atomic : Imagine a massive library where every word in every book is linked to another group of words in a group of other books. (again this feels like Plato talking, eg his Cave and all that stuff - which; is interesting)
Romeo : Sounds like the inter-web to me.
Atomic : I imagine that from outside it looks pretty special?
Romeo : Well, yes - dashed clever those boffins at CERN.
Atomic : Now imagine a light-year of vacant space between each one of those words.
Heckler : Allow me to interject in your interweb
Romeo : Heckler Alert! They said... Allow me to interject in your interweb
Atomic : Attention slut - I'd bet you'd drop your pants for a dollar. Makes me glad I'm broke. (funny heckler comeback :)
Atomic : And the topic of conversation was? Ah, yes...Now imagine a light-year of vacant space between each one of those words. (nice recovery from the heckle!)
Romeo : That's big.
Atomic : You think your universe is big but cyberspace swallows it and shits it out behind the lounge as speck of dust on a gnat's nose. (funny in a Douglas Adams tonal way)
Romeo : Why is there a gnat behind the lounge? (really funny, I am not sure why, maybe just the non sequitur nature of it)
Atomic : Because it's shit scared of all the vacant space. (really funny, laugh out loud)
Romeo : An agoraphobic gnat - I wonder what your therapist would make of that?
Heckler : Gnat's all folks!
Romeo : Someone just said... Gnat's all folks!
Atomic : Attention slut - I'd bet you'd drop your pants for a dollar. Makes me glad I'm broke. (would have been better if it was another heckle but since I am guessing these heckle comebacks are chosen randomly, not much we can do about that, just a bit of unluck on my part, this time)
Romeo : What I said was...
Atomic : Don't you dare make us look stupid.
Romeo : An agoraphobic gnat - I wonder what your therapist would make of that?

Mike - another very good one. Sometimes, it reminds me of /The Big Bang Theory/, a nerd-comedy show which I love.
ie In my opinion, Sheldon could deliver some of the above lines in that show, and it wouldn't seem out of place.
(Also the previous conversation, with all the sci-fi robot / geek humour references, Hal, C3PO, Robbie the Robot etc.
ie I am one of those geeks, so, I find this stuff entertaining/rewarding on several levels.)

Cheers

Joe

Email from JT Velikovsky - 20/10/2012 - 7:51 PM

Hi Mike

Tried to post this comment to the Blog but it didn't seem to recognize the characters

Really cool Mike. The script (or, performance?) that results flows really well and has many genuinely funny (laugh out loud) moments, for me. It really does give the impression of a straight man/funny man comedy duo, engaging in banter.

Also, having had a little bit of a play with Pandora chatbots and AIML myself, I can appreciate the amount of work it probably took to get it all looking and working this well. Very impressed, well done.

 The heckling feature was pretty remarkable too, offering the chance for interactivity. They (Atomic & Romeo) seemed to deal well with the heckling, and then segued nicely back into the routine. All felt realistic and very effective. 

 My only tech issue was that the window when it first opened (on my laptop pc, using IE) wasn't wide enough to allow me to hit NEXT but I finally right-clicked and it `show full' and it fixed the issue. 

 Anyway well done.

Cheers

Joe

Version 15 - so soon?

Version 15 actually reverts to the original landscape layout. Some of the users of the interface have experienced problems with the height of the portrait layout. In particular, if they have a small screen size or are running their screen at 800 x 600 resolution, the buttons that allow the user to proceed from the introduction page to the instruction page and, finally, to the interface page are hidden off the screen. This was a sufficiently major user interface issue to require a new version.

All new versions require a considerable amount of testing.  This one I've done as quickly as possible just to get it back out there for more testing and feedback from 'real' people.

What should Romeo say when he doesn't know how to respond?

Occasionally, due to the variable lengths of the sketches I've written, Romeo will be thrown a line he can't respond to. What should he do? The last thing he should do is respond with, "I have no answer for that". That line is reserved for Atomic as a mark of his machine-esque existence.

When Romeo receives a topic he can't reply to he, like Atomic, defaults to his * (star) category. Today I've rewritten his * category so that he will reply with one of the following six randomly generated replies. The *  in the template element actually picks up the line that was thrown by Atomic and incorporates it into Romeo's reply. There may be a dash of echolalia here - but I don't think it represents a psychiatric disorder for Romeo.


template

random

Atomic, you can be so random at times - * really?
Has someone put salt and vinegar on your chips?
You've been dead too long.
* - you're mad as a bag of hammers!
You've derailed my train of thought - why * ?
Sometimes I feel like I'm herding cats.

/random

/template

From these lines I can now get Atomic to either defend himself (usually by abusing Romeo), pick up on part of what Romeo has said (e.g. cats), or change to a new topic.