More Places to Waste Time

Here's something I found while surfing around last night that's more fun than it really ought to be: internet guessing games. Let the computer attempt to guess your person, object, animal, TV show, or movie, or (and this is a nifty twist) have it "think" of one and give you clues to guess at. The guesser AI learns as it goes, and it's actually pretty darned good. It knows lots of obscure TV shows, too. (Though I had to teach it Alien Nation.)

Speaking of AIs, if you want to speak to an AI, here's one I had a little conversation with last night: Jabberwacky. As it holds conversations, it's supposedly learning what the most appropriate responses are to various statements, and there were brief -- admittedly, very brief -- periods when it was almost good enough to pass the Turing test. (Especially when it went into "sullen teenager" mode on me and proceeded to start answering my (admittedly rather dumb) statements with responses like "Whatever.")