Vox Ex Machina by William Preston

The last short story I read was titled, "Vox Ex Machina", by William Preston. It was a cool little story that was much more realistic and near future than the last one I read. The author must have had a few conversations with the A.L.I.C.E. chat bot because he made the talking android head sound just like her. They story shows just how easily it is for someone to fool themselves into thinking a chat bot is thinking when it says the things it does. A user quickly discover's that the software doesn't remember anything about you or what the context of a conversation is about. It made me think about my chat bot programs and what I would need to do to make them better. If only the program could learn, it's goal being to be more human. I don't know how to go about this, but it was fun reading a story that made me think about it once more. Since I spend so much time reading church ministry stuff I think it would be fun to make a chat bot that preaches the gospel to people. Making an artificial preacher probably wouldn't be too hard. All a preacher is trying to do is inject a program into people's heads anyways. Any conversation you have with one of them will eventually steer into telling you what you should believe in and what you need to do with your life. One one hand I would be mocking the work that gospel preachers do, but on the other hand I think the machine would help remind me of what I need to do t continue my spiritual growth.

I would still like to have a machine assist me in my daily tasks. A personal assistant would be handy. But for now I can only dream. Some other fun geeking I've been doing lately is reviving old computers both for work and home fun. I'm writing this blog right now with a Toshiba 320CDS running Windows 98 and Opera 10.54!