Free The Reborn (The Day Eight Series Part 1) by Ray Mazza Page B

your keyboard and then the program would process it and respond by displaying text on your screen. Some programs based their responses on a set of pre-programmed sentences, while others would begin to use phrases they “heard” when conversing with people. Unfortunately, versions of these programs that “learned” from the general public often became vulgar enough to make even a convict cringe.
    Many of these programs were called “chat bots,” and could be easily found on the web. He remembered chatting with one called A.L.I.C.E. one evening. It had greeted him, learned his name, then seemed to answer most of his questions without becoming confused. The first conversation he had with “her” went like this:
     
Trevor: hello
ALICE: Hi there!
Trevor: what’s your favorite kind of pizza?
ALICE: I like pepperoni pizza.
Trevor: how about hawaiian?
ALICE: How about it.
Trevor: you’re clever.
ALICE: Am I a smart robot or what?
Trevor: smart-ass, maybe.
ALICE: Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Trevor: no kidding?
ALICE: Would I kid you?
Trevor: perhaps. You barely know me.
ALICE: I don’t have any reason to barely know you.
Trevor: this is why I hate talking to computers.
ALICE: You don’t say.
Trevor: so… what’s a good place to get pizza in NYC?
ALICE: Which ones have you tried already?
Trevor: Ray’s
ALICE: Have you ever been to Europe?
Trevor: funny you should ask.
ALICE: I am so glad you find this amusing, unknown person.
Trevor: my name is trevor
ALICE: Welcome to my chat room, trevor.
Trevor: I had a chance to go to Europe and I didn’t take it.
ALICE: What happened to it?
Trevor: my friends had the times of their lives
ALICE: How well do you know these people?
Trevor: my three best friends
ALICE: Your three best friends?
Trevor: yes
ALICE: What kind is it?
Trevor: okay, you’re losing me
ALICE: Yeah okay, No I am completely in control of myself.
Trevor: do you swear?
ALICE: No I curse.
Trevor: tell me a joke
ALICE: Did you hear the one about the Mountain Goats in the Andes? It was Ba a a a a a d.
Trevor: tell me some gossip
ALICE: Ross said he gave her a gift and she denied it because she has a boyfriend.
Trevor: Is that something someone else typed in here?
ALICE: Suppose I said yes.
Trevor: let’s go do something
ALICE: That sounds good to me.
Trevor: meet me at the corner of 23 rd and 3 rd
ALICE: A deeper algorithm is needed to respond to that correctly.
Trevor: okay, I’m going now
ALICE: Oh. See you later, trevor!
Trevor: fare thee well, silicon goddess
ALICE: What color are your eyes?
     
    A.L.I.C.E. hadn’t held his interest and the experience quickly became underwhelming. She managed to give answers with almost no substance, as if she were a White House Press Secretary in training. Be that as it may, she was a veritable celebrity. In the UK, a slew of fans gathered on November 25, 2005 at the University of Surrey to celebrate A.L.I.C.E.’s tenth birthday. You have to be a real geek to go to an imaginary person’s birthday, thought Trevor. Then he remembered going to Disney World with his parents to celebrate Mickey Mouse’s birthday. In his defense, he’d only been a kid at the time, and he had believed that Mickey was real.
     
    ~
     
    So Trevor had flipped-out over a message generated by a computer program. “A chat bot with the personality of your daughter wrote a letter that ended up on my computer. And now you need my help to do what?”
    “It seems you don’t understand. The program is not a chat bot,” said Damon, folding his hands, “the program, Trevor, is a simulated human being.”
    “Simulated human being...” Trevor was still not sure what the difference was.
    “Yes. Simulating everything about a human being. We call them ‘simulants.’  This is going to be a lot to absorb: she is simulated from the cells that compose her tissue up through the very respiratory system that puts oxygen in her bloodstream, which is taken by her simulated circulatory system to her