Some chatbots have been pretty passable at holding simple conversations for a while. Cleverbot's initial version started in 1986, and seems to have been okay at conversations even then. I remember using it in the early 2000s and being fairly impressed. I don't even think it's using any ML currently, and it's still giving me pretty decent results when I tried using it again just now.
Alexa has more complex requirements (it's funny when Cleverbot gives an occasional nonsensical response, but not so funny when Alexa unexpectedly orders you a $2,000 lawn gnome - okay, still kind of funny), but I definitely agree with you. I don't think this is a challenge that requires anything close to AGI, unless you want to start having truly insightful and philosophical conversations with a computer.
The existing implementations still have a long way to go. Here’s the chat I just had with cleverbot, the first thing it gave me after going to the site:
> Good afternoon. Do you know any good places to get dinner?
> Mot really.
> What about dessert?
> That's if you're a good bot.
> Not for you, for me.
> Okay..
Completely useless. I asked Alexa to find me the article on hacker news from today that talks about chat bots, she said “Sorry, I don’t know that one”
As a random, unscientific test it’s not very useful yet.
I remember reading that the user facing clever bot is really just for training. For competitions, a more robust dataset is used for the conversation and produces better results. [Citation needed]
...dude. The point never had anything to do with being the modern “PA” you’re imagining. It’s a chat bot designed 30+ years. It’s a neat (and at the time, breakthrough) for having conversations. It’s not intended to go find information for you..
It sounds advanced because it operated in an incredibility restricted context. It's impressive in the way that self-driving cars in the 80s were impressive because they worked at all.
Alexa has more complex requirements (it's funny when Cleverbot gives an occasional nonsensical response, but not so funny when Alexa unexpectedly orders you a $2,000 lawn gnome - okay, still kind of funny), but I definitely agree with you. I don't think this is a challenge that requires anything close to AGI, unless you want to start having truly insightful and philosophical conversations with a computer.