Piga Brain

From Pigasoftware

Piga Brain is a artificial intelligence research project hosted by Piga Software and staffed by Piga Software's Graham Wilson. The premise is to create an artificial intelligence personality similar to that of Erwin of the web-comic User Friendly or Holly from the sci-fi sit-com Red Dwarf. The virtual being is intended to be able to hold a basic conversation with a human being and also absorb and recall knowledge given to it (learning). Piga Brain's thought is designed to be stored in multiple code files, one for preset knowledge, one for stimuli response, and one for fresh knowledge, in order to keep the mind organized and still be extensive. It's default avatar is that of Piga Software's mascot Piga (voiced by a free to be used Text-To-Speech tool being developed by At&T), however it is going to be designed to take on others such as homages to science-fiction media (from which it is inspired). Later experiments intend it so that the user's interaction with the artificial intelligence will shape its personality in a similar way as it is to learn new knowledge, as some virtual pets do. Currently the only way to interact with the Piga Brain prototype is through text messages, other forms of stimuli such as voice recognition are also kept as goals for later experiments. It speaks back to the user through text boxes, sometimes with accompanying recordings. Text-To-Speech support is also intended for later experiments, as well as memorizing conversations in a log file. It is also desired for it to one day have the ability to see a persons face on a camera and recognize it and respond, as some robots and software already does, it is also desired to create a way for it to derive simple notes form Wikipedia. The current prototype's personality has jokingly been been described by Graham as "a bit of a suck up and overly polite, unless insulted in which case it gets tetchy", he also notes that this is not entirely unconventional as the Turing Test does include "responses to insults".