Artificial Intelligence

Dedicated to Isaac Asimov

Growing up on sci-fi during the personal computer revolution, it is no surprise that Dan Zen has created AI. Let us take a look through some projects and interests of the IMAT AI Special Interest Group co-founder.

Dan Zen - Baron Digbody's Castle Mystery AI

Dan Zen - Kula Pu Idol Hawaiian Mystery AI

Dan Zen - Lady with Brooch Beatnik art theft Mystery AI

Moustache Mysteries (1995-2000) ▲ Dan Zen launched three mysteries built with his mystery tool in Macromedia Director. Coded in Lingo, these featured O.S.C.I. (off screen character interaction) and helped Zen win the Programmer of the Year at the 2002 Canadian New Media Awards. A description of the types of AI used in the mysteries, such as: secret-keeping capabilities; statement fidelity loss on transmission; characters-in-room filters; etc. can be found in the Dan Zen Museum Coding Tour. TAKE TOUR

Dan Zen - Canadian New Media Award (CNMA)

Gorgolon (1996) ▲ One of the first Dan Zen games was to spot the Artificial Intelligence. This multiuser game is scheduled to be played at 12 noon when signals guiding your underwater craft get garbled by an ivy storm. One of the channels is the Artificial Intelligence and the others are other players. As Zen has yet to pass the Turing Test (legally), it turns out the signals are slightly scrambled with even some feedback between current and past channels. The game is also self modifying as the reward is the science fiction that players have been writing as they answer the Artificial Intelligence during off-game time. READ TALE

Grim Reaper's Age Guesser (1997) ▲ This AI uses a self-correcting algorithm. After guessing, the player is asked their real age. Each of the 13 questions is then graded up if they got the answer within five years and graded down if they did not. The game got on TV and over 10,000 people have had their age guessed. The Grim Reaper guessed 5% correctly, 35% within three years and over half within 5 years.. TAKE TEST

Hip Cats (1999) ▲ The AI in Hip Cats is more of a mood aid. You create online personas and view them and each other's in different moods. The words are translated into the appropriate vernacular. So in psychedelic mood, good becomes groovy. In Beatnik, "Dadio" might be added, etc. You can also set your own moods and share them with the world. The Gorgolonian mood uses the letter o for all vowels. Hipcats were rated and dated - the Hipcats with better than a 5/10 rating on over 5 votes get moved to the Left side otherwise they stay on the right. Letting people make their own questions and situations really made for realistic interviews. VISIT HIPCATS

Meta AI Nano Anti-gravity Sci-fi Mystery (2008) ▲ Set in the slight future, this vlogging story featuring the Zen Mix tool deals with an AI civilization in the world of quantum computing and nano technology. The story on Zen Vlog is incomplete but Zen made a short film called Nanora for the 2014 Sci-Fi 48 Film Festival. META VLOG WATCH NANORA

Dan Zen Nanora - pseudo interactive story telling AI

Nanora AI Bots (2011) ▲ Nanora is an inside look at the Artificial Intelligence land using Zen's pseudo interactive story telling tool, Altura. Here you are a bot in a collective nano brain seeking understanding. NANORA BEGINS NANORA LENS NANORA PORT

Artificial Intelligence and Media Books ▲ Dan Zen has read a few books in his time although he has been thinking in first principles for the last 20 years. VIEW LARGE

Current Mouse Pad ▲ Zen should probably re-read these essays which he got half way through in the nineties while making a CD Rom on Marshal McLuhan for Voyager who also published a CD Rom on this book. Zen has the box but unfortunately, not the disc.

Neuroscience ▲ Dan Zen is working his second way through a requested present in order to further his research into thoughts as physical entities - see Nodism in the next section below.

Nodism (2005-Present) ▲ A goal of Nodism is to connect the laws of physics with what we sentient beings sense and understand. Nodism is the study of nesting - both in composition and classification. Composition is physical - spatial and temporal. Classification is mental - the recognition of similar properties. Both can be described by hierarchy diagrams so a large part of Nodism is the study of hierarchy and how it is used in all disciplines. NODISM TOUR

Meta Creativity Framework (2015) ▲ Dan Zen has renamed his creativity framework to Meta. The framework is based on Nodism and discusses relevance which is at the heart of strong AI. Zen figures that relevance is quantitative based on occurrences of words in recursive definitions. VISIT FRAMEWORK

Zen Bot (2000) ▲ An attempt at an AI chat bot in PHP. Lots of text was input from various mystery sources like a president's speech, Dan Zen's e-mail for the last two months, etc. The code then attempts to make sentences based on frequency tables of prepositions next to nouns, etc. The code is below. Zen planned on launching a bot on his blog using the Zen Bot but secretly connecting two real people when two people were viewing the site at the same time. This would then give people the feeling of talking to a successful Turing Test AI. ▼

// receive input from user
$date = date("F j, Y, g:i a");
$input = "If I sit at the computer will my hands hurt more than my mind?";
if (isset($_POST["input"])) {
	$input = $_POST["input"];	
}
if (isset($_POST["responses"])) {
	$responses = $_POST["responses"];
} else {
	$responses = 1;
}
// get context
if (isset($_POST["whom"])) {
	$w = $_POST["whom"];
	if ($w == "") {
		$w = "b";
	}
} else {
	$w = "b";
}
$ff = "";
if (isset($_POST["text"])) {
	$f = $_POST["text"];
	$f = stripslashes($f);
	if ($f == "") {
		$f = join(" ", file($w.".txt"));
	} else {
		$ff = $f;
	}
} else {
	$f = join(" ", file("d.txt"));
}
$f = preg_replace("/\s+/", " ", $f);

$handle=fopen("log.txt","a");
fwrite($handle, $date." [$responses] [bot=$w]\n".$input."\n".$ff."\n\n-------------------\n\n");
fclose($handle);

require_once('../all/all.php');

/*
adds researched frequencies to database table zenbot
$file = file("words.txt");
foreach ($file as $f) {
	$line = preg_split("/\t/",$f);
	$word = $line[0];
	$type = $line[1];
	$frequency = $line[2];
	$status = "";
	$query = "INSERT INTO zenbot (word,type,frequency,status) VALUES ( '$word', '$type', '$frequency', '$status' )";
	$result = mysql_query($query,$db);
}
return;
*/

// initial parameters
$wordMin = 1; // minumum length word for seed
$wordMax = 3; // when building sentences this is the max on either side of the seed
$triesMax = 10; // here's how many times the splicer attempts to join sentences.
$wordNum = 3; // how many words per sentence expansion from seed
$backMax = 3; // how many words max to come back to end sentence "properly"

// get nouns and then verbs from input and apply researched frequencies to them
$ia = preg_split("/\W/", $input);
$verbs = array();
$nouns = array();
$vTally = 0;
$nTally = 0;
foreach ($ia as $a) {
	if (strlen($a) > $wordMin) {
		$query = "SELECT * FROM zenbot WHERE word = '$a' AND type = 'NoC'";
		$result = mysql_query($query,$db);
		if ($result) {		
			$myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result);
			$frequency = $myrow["frequency"];
			$type = $myrow["type"];						
			if ($frequency > 0) {
				$nTally++;	
				if (!$nouns[$frequency]) {
					$nouns[$frequency] = array();
				}				
				array_push($nouns[$frequency], $a);				
			}
		}			
	}	
}
reset($ia);	
foreach ($ia as $a) {
	if (strlen($a) > $wordMin) {		
		$query = "SELECT * FROM zenbot WHERE word = '$a' AND type = 'Verb'";
		$result = mysql_query($query,$db);
		if ($result) {
			$myrow = mysql_fetch_array($result);
			$frequency = $myrow["frequency"];
			$type = $myrow["type"];			
			if ($frequency > 0) {
				if ($nTally == 1) {	
					// don't add it to verbs if it is the only noun			
					if (current(current($nouns)) == $a) { 			
						continue;						
					}
				}			
				if (!$verbs[$frequency]) {
					$verbs[$frequency] = array();
				}
				array_push($verbs[$frequency], $a);				
				$vTally++;
			}			
		}				
	}	
}

// add to pre/post proximity frequency lists
$post = array();
$pre = array();
$sentenceEnd = array();
$words = preg_split("/ - |[ ,\"\"\;]+/",$f);
$last = "~";
$tally = 0;
foreach ($words as $w) {	
	$tally++;
	if ($w != "" && $w != "\n") {					
		// create post proximity list
		$string = "";
		if (preg_match("/(.*)[\.\!\?]+$/", $w, $matches)) {
			$w = $matches[1];
			$string = "~";
			$sentenceEnd[$w] = 1;
		} else {		
			for ($j=0; $j<$wordNum; $j++) {
				$nextWord = $words[$tally+$j];
				if (preg_match("/(.*)[\.\!\?]+$/", $nextWord, $matches)) {
					$nextWord = $matches[1]."~";
					$string .= $nextWord;
					break;
				} else {
					$string .= $nextWord." ";	
				}	
			}		
		}
		if (!$post[$w]) {
			$post[$w] = array();			
		}					
		array_push($post[$w], $string);
		
	
		// create pre proximity list
		$string = "";
		if ($tally == 1) {			
			$string = "~";
		} else {		
			for ($j=0; $j<$wordNum; $j++) {
				if ($tally-2-$j < 0) {break;}
				$nextWord = $words[$tally-2-$j];
				if (preg_match("/(.*)[\.\!\?]+$/", $nextWord, $matches)) {					
					$string = "~".$string;
					break;
				} else {					
					$string = $nextWord." ".$string;	
				}	
				if ($j == $wordNum - 1) {					
					if ($tally-2-$j-1 < 0) {
						$string = "~".$string;
					} else {
						$nextWord = $words[$tally-2-$j-1];
						if (preg_match("/(.*)[\.\!\?]+$/", $nextWord)) {					
							$string = "~".$string;
						}															
					}
				}
			}					
		}
		if (!$pre[$w]) {
			$pre[$w] = array();			
		}					
		array_push($pre[$w], $string);
	}	
}

/*
while (list($key, $val) = each($pre)) {
	foreach ($val as $a) {
		echo $key." - ".$a." \n";
	}
}
while (list($key, $val) = each($post)) {
	foreach ($val as $a) {
		echo $key." - ".$a." \n";
	}
}
exit;
*/

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
$input = stripslashes($input);
echo " $input Answer(s): \n";

for ($times=0; $times<$responses; $times++) {
	$tries = 0;
	echo finish(buildReply())." \n";
}

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

function splicer($vs, $ns, $v, $n) {	
	// combine two sentences by a common word found after the verb in the one
	// and before the noun in the other to increase relevance

$v_array = preg_split("/ /",$vs);
	$v_splice = array();
	$v_middle = "";
	$startWords = "";
	$check = 0;
	foreach ($v_array as $w) {
		if ($check == 0) {
			$startWords .= $w." ";
			if ($w == $v) {
				$check = 1;
			}
		} else {
			$v_middle .= $w." ";
			$v_splice[$w] = $v_middle;
		}
	}	
	$n_array = preg_split("/ /",$ns);
	$middleWords = "";	
	$endWords = "";	
	$check = 0;
	foreach ($n_array as $w) {
		if ($w == "") {continue;}
		if ($w == $n) {
			if ($check == 0) {
				return "";
			} 
		}		
		if ($check == 1) {
			$endWords .= $w." ";
		}
		if ($v_splice[$w] != "" && $check == 0) {
			$middleWords = $v_splice[$w];
			$check = 1;					
		}
	}	
	return $startWords." ".$middleWords." ".$endWords;
}

// talk head -> head is a verb and rarer than talk so it takes it as a verb leaving no noun.

Facebook Party ▲ in 2007 Dan Zen launched a party app. Unfortunately, this was just before Facebook took apps off the walls and everyone heralded the death of apps (until Farmville came along). Still possibly a good idea, the app featured Facebook icons that walked around with legs spelling the word party. The icons would talk to you based on interests. There was also a popularity rating based on factors such as the number of friends, posts, fans, and how many times you interacted with the party. An admin tool was planned for version two with settings like which friends you wanted to see fall down drunk or wear a lamp shade. SAMPLE PARTY

Stick Aliens (2007) ▲ Made for Facebook during the "What kind of _______ are you?" craze. Stick Aliens featured a cool radial interface to assign attributes in a proportioned way. You can drag the outer properties or the inner eye of the oracle and a Stick Alien that matches your mood would appear on your profile. This demonstration version shows the possible matching aliens under the oracle. TRY ORACLE

Darth Detector (2004) ▲ A self modifying site where you enter a URL and the detector will tell you how close Darth Vader is to the site. SPOILER: it uses the number of times a site has been entered into the Darth Detector to guage proximity. DARTH DETECTOR

Password Paradox (1999) ▲ A self modifying site where you try to guess passwords to ascend to the Billionaire's lounge. SPOILER: the passwords that other people guess are the passwords that make up the correct passwords. Self modifying sites, while not acting as a person, still have a quality of intelligence in how they work. PASSWORD PARADOX

Quiz Bowl (2010) ▲ Created for the Ontario Marketing Awards, Dan Zen collaborated with Keith & Peggy Barnwell and David Quesnelle from Sheridan to turn a real person into an animated character! Zen used his Woodpecker sound animation code to animate a talking Oscar charcter's lips to the sound of David's voice. While not Artificial Intelligence, it had the feeling of Artificial Life. READ ARTICLE

June 16 Dan Zen Expo Exhibit

Artificial Intelligence

Dedicated to Isaac Asimov