An online chat between two robots set up by Cornell students is
entertaining the nation. "It was just an afternoon hack," said
Hod Lipson, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace
engineering. "It went viral in 24 hours and took us completely
by surprise." Lipson asked Ph.D. students Igor Labutov and Jason
Yosinski to set up the conversation as a demo for his class on
artificial intelligence. They chose a Web-based chatbot (a
computer program designed to simulate human conversation) called
Cleverbot. Anyone can go to http://cleverbot.com and carry on a
typed conversation with the robot. The students added text-to-
speech capability and computer-generated faces, set two laptops
side-by-side on a table and connected them to Cleverbot, seeding
the conversation with a simple "Hi." They videotaped part of the
conversation and posted it on YouTube. Watch at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnzlbyTZsQY. As of Aug. 31, it
had more than a million hits. The two avatars, one male and one
female, start by exchanging