Greetings Tom420,

Thanks Tom, that's a good and realistic question. In what manner could a AI program enhance a chatroom, or help the hosting staff in what they do?

The answer I feel is based upon what the chatroom is setup primarly for, does it help visitors, does it inform visitors, does it have a special keystone difference from any of 5,000 generic chatrooms within the same category?

If the answer is NO, then r2d2 would likely be parked in the corner mostly untapped and rarely used. If the answer to some of those critera is YES, then one over time can build a flow chart of what your staff spends the greatest amount of time on regarding repeative functions. Then the AI engine is gone over to see if he/she is capable of assisting in those repeative functions.

What does that mean and what would be the end result? What that means is the hosts would be better able to spend more quality time with the visitors which enhances any chatroom experience I have ever been involved in for the past many years. The repeative functions are generally carried out thru various whisper modes which do not interupt the main chat channel conversations.

Yes in some regards what is described is in fact already in place with some of the IRC bots in now. Used for help guides, search guides, and some passing out simple text requests thru complex map searches. Perhaps more user friendly for the chatroom visitors the AI programs thou are seldom friendly to someone adding and changing the coding in their databases which is the very heart of nearly all AI engines and programs.

My current thoughts on such a integration would be a hybrid design. mIRC would be the interface placing the text strings of either the entire chatroom or locked onto one specific individual into a temporary file which would then be processed by an AI engine written in Pearl or C++. Such would require a sizeable amount of computer resources and the often chuckle of the no lapse response by a IRC Bot would likely be gone also, for it would take afew seconds to process the text strings by the off board AI engine, place that back to the mIRC handler to input back into the active channel.

The majority of visitors to a main library are there to locate a specific book and obtain information from that book. In the previous decades the librarian staff has greatly shifted over on various step by step visitor enhancements to enable them to spend more quality time with special customers at the help desk and less time at walking over to a given rack at isle 11 and pointing their finger. These changes do not diminish the experience of either party, it enhances the experience of the individual at the help desk that has more time with the main librarian and it empowers the remaining visitors to be able to quickly locate the information for themselves.

I hope this helps answer some of your question Mike,

Regards,
MDA