Main Page > Instant Messenger Bot

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Project

• Started: 2008/09
• Goal: Create an autonomous program that learns to converse intelligently by holding text-based conversations via instant messages with people online.
• Ideas and Problems to Consider
• Similar Projects: List of Chatterbots (Wikipedia)

Language of Choice

• Language:
  • Python

• Motivation for its use:
  • Exposes group members to a new language
  • Has existing example code online related to our project
  • Excels with strings and regular expressions
  • Enforces clean code
  • Rapid prototyping of new ideas

• How do I learn Python?:
  1. Learn Python in 10 Minutes
  2. Introduction to Python Lists

• Graph Package
  • We've decided to use NetworkX, due to it's ease of use and integration with Python
  • To install it:
    1. Check out their subversion repository: https://networkx.lanl.gov/svn/networkx/trunk
    2. cd into the directory you checked it out to
    3. run python setup.py install
  • API reference page

3rd Party Modules and Toolkits

• Natural Language Processing
  • High Level : MontyLingua
  • Low Level: Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK)

• Graphs
  • NetworkX
  • igraph

External Links & Research

• The Chatterbox Challenge
• NLP Parts of Speech Tags
• Wikipedia article on the history of tagging
• "The Book of AI" manual at Personality Forge
• Interronet Chatbot Benchmarking Method