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Sunday, August 02, 2009

Talk with My Cyber Twin

Looking for a way to be in multiple places at the same time? Want to provide 24/7 feedback to your students and friends?

Well, let me introduce you to MyCyberTwin. This is an online Chatterbot. You ask it questions and it will respond in ways that develop into conversations.

You may have seen a similar Artificially Intelligent conversational agent, Eliza. Eliza was an AI program that came with the Apple II+ computer back in 1980.  It was so good at responding to your questions that some people were fooled into thinking that Eliza was a real person. This is called the Eliza-Effect.

The beauty of MyCyberTwin is that you can teach it what to say. There are over 70 personality questions that you can answer to give your CyberTwin a personality. There are 18 lessons with as many as 36 items where CyberTwin provides you with a potential question/statement that might be provided by a user and you can provide possible answers. You can even provide your own questions and answers.

The best part is that your CyberTwin keeps track of every conversation and even emails each of them to you so that you can keep track of who your cybertwin's discussions. This also allows you to refine your answers as discussions are held.

In short, MyCyberTwin allows you to create your own clone or create a completely different personality - depending upon the persona you want to present.

POSSIBLE APPLICATION: Could you imagine having students create online personalities using MyCyberTwin? They research the personality, perspective and opinions of Thomas Jefferson or Harriet Tubman or Julius Caesar to define the answers that a specific individual would provide.

Think of the discussion and debate that would engage students for hours as they try to get it "just right." THAT is technology-facilitated learning!!

Well, try it out. Tell me what  you think.  I haven't answered all of the questions for my MyCyberTwin, but if you ask interesting questions I will work to refine it.


Please leave comment about how you might use this app.

Z

2 comments:

  1. Dr. Z,

    I find this completely fascinating and I am very impressed with the responses that Leigh gives. I could see this being used maybe as a project in a psychology or forensic class studying certain type of extreme personalities.

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  2. Anthony,

    Thanks for trying out this CyberTwin. I just so happened to go to MyCyberTwin soon after you had a discussion with him. I looked at the questions and answers. Found that some of the answers were not the way I would have answered them, so I was able to change the response.

    This is a system where we can constantly refine the answers that the system will provide. The opportunities for creating characters or emulating people (living or dead) is fascinating.

    Thanks for reading and share it with your friends.

    Z

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