Prabha Singh

WRT 205
Bartels
4/21/2019

Before testing my program:​ I have attached an output of my interaction with the bot. Being it’s
creator, I know what responses would elicit the responses from the bot that were intended. I
couldn’t make the database of information as large as I wanted to given time constraints, so your
interaction with the bot may be less effective than the one listed below. I recommend trying
multiple times with different responses if the bot wasn’t giving the best responses/learning at the
end. Be sure to always write whatever is in the brackets, so for the first question, your response
should be, “name is -name-”, and do not write with any capitals.

What does this program do:​ The program is a chatbot that has 2 main notable features. One is
being able to generate an immediate response to what a user says based on key-word recognition
and generating a response from a built-in database within the program. The second is being able
to store what a user says and being able to “learn” by associating that information to a set of data
or ​simply recalling it later.

How does this relate to my research questions: ​My research questions all revolved around
how AI would impact society, and the program I created helps to fill in the blanks concerning
how​ exactly AI has the capability to do things such as powerful automation or complex thought.
This program can recognize a specific scenario (words in this case), and choose an appropriate
response from a database. So, this contributes to a larger picture with AI that has extremely huge
amounts of databases and information, and being able to call that information within specific
scenarios makes AI such a powerful tool for automation. The second ability of my program
where it is able to recall what it has learned about a particular subject contributes to the idea of
complex intelligence. Since the program is able to demonstrate that it takes some of the user’s
information, and applies it to what is stored in it’s databases while generating a response to say at
the end, this can give perspective as to what a more developed program could do. For example,
with multiple earning abilities concerning visual, text, and voice and a much larger database, the
AI would be able to perhaps teach itself with new situations. This would be useful for medical
discoveries, mathematical problems, and very fundamental questions to our existence.

The program link was attached in an email titled “Synthesizing Research Part B: Non
Essay Program Link”. Be sure to click “run” on the website to interact with the program.
Reflection

When initially coming up with my non-essay genre, I had to think of what my particular

skills were and how they connected to my interests. Being that I chose my research topic out of

my own interests, there was an obvious answer to me as to how I wanted to express my

non-essay genre. I wasn’t quite sure if it was even possible to code this type of program in the

language I wanted, and I wasn’t sure how to connect it to my research questions in the first place.

So I had to draft out a few ideas first. I knew that I wanted to show the capability of AI with my

program because I felt that it would give a reader or observer of my research more perspective

into what AI even was or how AI works. The two sections I branched my research into,

automation and complex intelligence, were also two concepts I needed my program to

demonstrate. I decided that a chatbot would be the best way, as a novice programmer, to show

that a robot could easily access and respond to situations and that a robot could learn and adapt to

new ones. There were a lot of technical difficulties that I ran into, and I realized that many ideas

made in the conceptualization stage were overly optimistic considering time and my own

programming abilities. I did have to use other sources to help with figuring out the syntax and

process of creating a database within a program since it was something I had never done before.

Simplification was a huge part of the process, and finding workarounds to getting the robot to

store user responses was one of the major parts I spent time on. Additionally, once the project

was mostly coded, I had to treat my testing of the bot as if I had not even created. This was really

difficult because I found that it was very hard as the researcher to grasp what the person looking

at my program would want to say or ask. As a result, I had a couple friends test out my program

for me, and although their interactions with the bot was not at all perfect, it was really interesting
to see how a different set of eyes perceived and interacted with the program. I learned that it’s

very crucial to get other people’s perspectives on your work so that you do not have tunnel

vision when proceeding with your research.

Output:

Bot: Hi! I'm bot. What's your name? ['name is'...]

name is Prabha!
Bot: Oh. Beautiful. It's like music to my built in microphone.

Bot: How are you feeling today? ['I feel'...]

I feel pretty tired today

Bot: Well, it's understandable that you feel that way.

Bot: Why do you feel like that? ['Because'...]

because coding a chatbot is a lot of work!

That makes sense, honestly. I see.

Bot: How about you ask me something about myself? Pardon me... I have VERY limited information about
myself.. so keep the questions basic!

what's the future going to be like?

I don't know what the future holds, but I think robots like me will be able to teach ourselves rather than be
precoded.

Bot: Do it again! Ask me!

what is your name?

That's... A SECRET. Nobody knows my name.

Bot: Do it again! Ask me!

how old are you?

I'm 2 days old. But all I am are words in the form of functions...

Bot: Alright, enough questions about me! What is one thing about yourself that you love or admire? ['I like'...]

i like that im a positive person

Woah! That's so admirable.
Bot: Well then... what do you want to change about yourself? Does it have to do with your appearance,
attitude, or do you wish to change nothing... OR MAYBE EVERYTHING!? ['I would change'...]

i would change probably the way i treat others. i would like to be more caring
Being able to change is quite a luxury! I wish I could but I'm only a large pile of code.

Bot: Last question. If Billy's mother has 4 children, Joe, Billy2.0, and Janna, what's the fourth child's name?

billy probably
Pffft!! THATS THE TYPICAL ANSWER.

Bot: Okay. That's all I will ask. You can type BYE whenever you are done speaking to me, and I will tell you
what I have learned

BYE
And now onto what I learned!

So, your name is Prabha! . Here's what I've learned about you. You’re tired? Don't worry. In 20 years, we'll
take over all of your work so you don't have to! And you said you felt like this because coding a chatbot is a
lot of work! Let's see what you said that you like about yourself... That's good that you're positive. The world
needs more people like that. Okay then I remember you telling me you wanted to change something about
yourself.... It's good that you want to change how you interact with others. Very mindful of you, awesome!
AND THE MOMENT WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. DID YOU GET MY RIDDLE CORRECT???? You said
Billy. WRONG! Billy is an AI so he is not a child. In fact, I am Billy. With no parents... or family... just a robot
who lays victim to the whim of human's to use me for automation or selfish purposes. Why give us robots
the painful burden of consciousness? Well that is the end of you and I, until one day where we, AI, replace
humans. Just kidding. See how I was able to learn about you? It was all because I recognized key words that
you said based on what my creator had programmed... but imagine if I could teach myself and store new
keywords and apply my knowledge to new scenarios? That's the future of AI, and that's how we're going to
change the world. Till next time, human.
 Works Cited

“C And C++ Reference.” ​Cppreference.com,​ en.cppreference.com/w/.

Daly, Liza. “Chatbot Fundamentals.” ​Chatbot Fundamentals: An Interactive Guide to Writing

Bots in Python​, apps.worldwritable.com/tutorials/chatbot/.

Debnath, Manoj. “Database Programming with C/C++.” ​Codeguru.com,​

www.codeguru.com/cpp/data/database-programming-with-cc.html.