Kieran Healy

Twenty Questions

Via Ben Hyde (whom I met last week at the Open Source conference) comes this bit of AI. If you’re tired of those “Which x are you?” quizzes, try this one. It beat me the first three times I played it, until I started thinking of much harder words. Trying to figure out what counts as a hard word is interesting in itself.

It guessed “toaster,” but only after 28 questions. The AI and I had several disagreements about the properties of toasters.

What works well are things that there are many misconceptions about, I fooled it with atom, time, space. The program is pretty good though.

It got me with ‘tire’.

I won with “gluten.”

I got it with “gingko tree”—but I was surprised how seemingly random the questions were.

What exactly does “less sanserif” mean?! Like AI, I am guessing many things…

Won with weeds and “toilet water” (obsolete commodity for women sort of like perfume or cologne”.) Choosing very obscure names is probably cheating. Lost with sawdust.

Even the late questions were random. After it knew it was a liquid it asked non-liquid questions.

I can win every time, mere mortals. Three for three on:

smallpox
gastroenterology
marketing

The last is a paticularly shameful failure, although it brought me the pleasure of responding “yes” to the question “Is it annoying?”

Be creative! How about inference? Affluence? It is very weak on questions that explore abstract concepts. myopia. prestidigitation. verdigris. amplitude.

Work it!

-Magik

I won with toilet paper and straight pins.

I had to crack up when the questions for the first included “is it multicolored?” followed by “can you use it in a church?”

Rana puzzles me. I beat it with an archbishop, but I wasn’t asked if I could use it in a church, although I admitted it was multi-coloured. If it had asked that question, it might have won.

It might just be trying to build up its database rather than win. Even after it’s narrowed down the field to “close” it throws out pointless generic question.

It got naked mole rat vey quickly. It also got “walleye”, a sport fish found only in the American and Canadian midwest as far as I know. Presumably this is because someones else had used exactly those creatures.

Odd algorithm. I won on piston, yellowtail snapper and voting machine (I live in FL) Lost on vacuum tube. It claimed not to know about the fish or the voting machine. The program had many disagreements about the properties of pistons. At least when I’ve played with the kids, unspoken rule was to stick to concrete objects. Seems only fair with a machine.

I came across this 20 Questions program (or a similar one) a couple of years ago. It seems like the questions are still relatively random. I beat it with both telephone and stapler (not terribly obscure objects, although the game and I had some disagreement in interpreting questions).

20 Questions

20 QUESTIONS….Via Kieran Healy, this computerized version of 20 Questions is pretty fun. It beat me with “cigar” but lost on “teapot.” Give it a try….

Can you beat it?

Via Kieran Healy, I found this version of twenty questions. Very clever. It beat me with Jack Russell terrier, but