948: AI

AI

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Title text: And they both react poorly to showers.

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Explanation

This comic is a reference to a funny video of two Cleverbot AIs talking to each other. Cleverbot was a chatbot that was considered revolutionary at the time of the comic's release, and was able to sound human by recording and analyzing the inputs users gave. However, AI models weren't very advanced at the time this comic was published (ChatGPT wouldn't come out for over 11 years), which caused a lot of inaccuracies in its language model.

The video Cueball and Megan are discussing is referencing a twitch stream where someone modified two Google Home devices to talk to each other using cleverbot. As this was very early in its development, the AI was unable to sound like humans or hold normal conversations. This led to a conversation which initially felt normal but was completely incoherent. This was considered humorous by many viewers of the stream and viewers of the clips following it, hence Cueball's remark about it just "clumsily sampling" data.

Megan then sums up that as of the release of this comic computers were good at chess and at driving cars through a desert. And she thus concludes that a Cleverbot would be perfect for attending Burning Man. Although some might think of deserts as a place with no obstacles to hit, one must also consider rocky deserts which are a rather difficult terrain to navigate: making this search field very interesting for space exploration as well. The ability of such self-driving cars would improve much later, with this comic being the first with a direct reference to them. Later, self-driving cars became a recurring topic on xkcd.

Burning Man is a week-long event held yearly in Black Rock City, Nevada. The festival encourages an artistic, anti-establishment philosophy and attracts a broad but devoted following combining hippies, anarchists, nudists, techno-utopians and survivalists. Shows of custom cars on the desert plain are a big part of Burning Man, and mental games like chess are a popular way to pass the time there. However, a common joke about Burning Man attendees is that they can only talk about Burning Man - hence why they can't hold a five minute conversation.

A tradition of Burning Man is not to shower while you are there, mostly because all water must be brought in from offsite. Of course, Cleverbot reacts badly in showers because if you do try to shower a Cleverbot, you end up with a shorted out computer.

Transcript

[Megan sits on an office chair at a desk. A laptop computer is on the desk, audio from a Cleverbot chat is shown coming from the laptop with a zigzag line from the screen. Megan has turned her head away from the computer to the right addressing Cueball off-panel.]

Megan: Did you see the Cleverbot-Cleverbot chat?

Cleverbot (from computer): I am not a robot. I'm a unicorn.

[In the next frame-less panel, Megan has turned the chair away from the desk, which is not shown, and is now sitting with her hands in her lap in front of Cueball who holds one hand up as he replies.]

Cueball: Yeah. It's hilarious, but it's just clumsily sampling a huge database of lines people have typed. Chatterbots still have a long way to go.

[A close-up of Megan's head and shoulders. She has a hand to her chin and appears to be contemplating the last remark. Cueball replies from off-panel.]

Megan: So... Computers have mastered playing chess and driving cars across the desert, but can't hold five minutes of normal conversation?

Cueball (off-panel): Pretty much.

[Both are shown again as in panel two, Cueball with his hands down.]

Megan: Is it just me, or have we created a Burning Man attendee?

Trivia

Randall's sarcastic comparison of AI systems to Burning Man attendees turned out to be more true than expected, as current AI systems were shown and proven to have a bias to align to their programmers's beliefs and political compass. Which makes it now a major research area to make AI systems truly neutral in their interactions.

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Discussion

I object to this unfair depiction of burning man attendants. My beer can do all that, hold me. Davidy²²[talk] 08:48, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

I don't think the joke about the five-minute conversation is about how Burning Man attendees can only talk about one subject. That wouldn't limit them to five minutes. I think it's a joke about them taking drugs. AmbroseChapel (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

I guarantee you the "cars across the desert" is a reference to desert bus 172.69.170.120 16:30, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I made a Trivia section because I'm not sure where I should put that piece of info. please verify 162.158.193.188 18:06, 11 February 2023 (UTC)ChX

WIth LLMs now this comic is from a different era before actually clever AI.. 108.162.241.171 (talk) 19:43, 15 November 2023 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Define 'clever'... 172.70.90.230 21:15, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
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