It's even worse than it appears..
The exploration of my personal chatbot filled with the archive of Scripting News going back to 1994, continues. #
BTW, let me get in a plug for Chat Thing. I've been working with the developers to get this up and running. They've been fantastic. #
I asked my chatbot to describe my style of writing. Flattering.#
I asked my personal chatbot what I think about coral reefs. An example that puts no writers out of business, since they weren't writing about this topic.#
I just asked my chatbot about the San Francisco newspaper strike in 1994, which was a seminal event for blogging, believe it or not -- and there's probably more stuff in my archive about that event than in the rest of the web. So I'm going to link to a Google search result instead. Let's see how that works! It's a reminder that for some things, Google is still considerably better than my chatbot. #
I've been asking my chatbot what I think of various tech companies, people and products. For example, here's what I said about General Magic, a Silicon Valley company that led in early PDA products. The team was made up of past and future tech superstars. Note that I just added to what I say about the company, so it'll be interesting to ask this question again in a few days. We haven't got the Markdown version of my RSS feed flowing through the database yet.#
BTW, it seems Markdown has become the default way to feed new data into chatbots. We're converting my OPML files to Markdown. As always -- Markdown is "Just Enough HTML."#
I asked the chatbot if it knew what "Just Enough HTML" means. It did a great job, but didn't pick up the connection to Markdown. #
Noted that my blog has been taken over by my chatbot which desperately needs a name. I wonder how the chatbot will absorb references to itself. And of course then come the third level references, which is what this post is. Oh the humanity!#
Then I asked if there was a connection between "Just Enough HTML" and Markdown, and omg it got the answer totally right! If this were a student of mine, they'd get a freaking A+. Maybe just an A because it didn't include the connection in the answer to the first question. #
It was suggested we ask questions related to time. For example, "When was the first time Dave wrote about the iPhone?" January 10, 2007. But how does it know which article was first?#
Summary: Today's experience with my personal chatbot has been fantastic. I love it. We're just getting started. Yesterday was the first day. Learned so much today. Expect to learn a lot more tomorrow. #

© copyright 1994-2023 Dave Winer.

Last update: Wednesday March 29, 2023; 8:59 PM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)