Twenty Questions
After reading Chris Crawford's description of "The Dr.K Project", I was wondering how it would work as a story. It is described as a computer program which gives the user a set of words such as "A place. A tea chest. A body bag. Some scenery. An assassin. Something happens." which are gradually replaced as the user clicks on one at a time. The computer program refines the scope of the objects according to what the user clicks until the phrases are more specific and the user can, from what I understand, imagine a story which contains all of these elements.
I'm still not sure how much of a story that project is, but it reminded me of something I'm a lot more familiar with: the game of twenty questions. Specifically, the online version at www.20q.net, which operates using artificial intelligence that has collected information from everyone who has ever played against it. It is eerie how often the program can guess what you're thinking, but when it's wrong it's REALLY wrong. In a similar way to the project Chris Crawford described, the user interacts with the program by picking among "Yes, No, Unknown, Irrelevant, Sometimes, Probably, Doubtful" in response to the program's questions. Though the questions often seem irrelevant, the program is narrowing down the options as the user plays, and its surprising how accurate it can be just from asking things like "Do you wear make-up?" and "Are you Catholic?". At the end of twenty questions the program will make a guess, and if it is wrong the user can keep playing until the program has it right.
In comparison to the project Chris Crawford described, this seems like a sort of inversion of it: instead of the user choosing objects and leaving the story to the computer, the user chooses a "story" (in the form of a person or object) at the beginning and then manipulates the elements the computer gives to form it.
I'm still not sure how much of a story that project is, but it reminded me of something I'm a lot more familiar with: the game of twenty questions. Specifically, the online version at www.20q.net, which operates using artificial intelligence that has collected information from everyone who has ever played against it. It is eerie how often the program can guess what you're thinking, but when it's wrong it's REALLY wrong. In a similar way to the project Chris Crawford described, the user interacts with the program by picking among "Yes, No, Unknown, Irrelevant, Sometimes, Probably, Doubtful" in response to the program's questions. Though the questions often seem irrelevant, the program is narrowing down the options as the user plays, and its surprising how accurate it can be just from asking things like "Do you wear make-up?" and "Are you Catholic?". At the end of twenty questions the program will make a guess, and if it is wrong the user can keep playing until the program has it right.
In comparison to the project Chris Crawford described, this seems like a sort of inversion of it: instead of the user choosing objects and leaving the story to the computer, the user chooses a "story" (in the form of a person or object) at the beginning and then manipulates the elements the computer gives to form it.
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