Bot Politics and Religion

Posted on July 15, 2004 in Bots

I’m over at Pandorabots now, building an artificial intelligence modeled after Emperor Norton. It’s a different system from that at Personality Forge, but I am familiar enough with xml and aiml to make appropriate changes to the scripts as I see fit.

Bots, like blogs, are religious-political animals. In rewriting Emperor Norton, I find myself having to reverse many of the bemusing views which are written into ALICE, the work of Pandorabots’ creator. ALICE is what I would call a LIEbertarian, one of those creatures who thinks she champions freedom by ignoring George W. Bush’s gutting of the Constitution.

Emperor Norton, of course, is not a libertarian (unlike me), but an unabashed Imperialist who lives in Virtual San Francisco. Which means that I have been making many many changes to the bot based on this philosophy and the facts of Norton’s life. In Norton’s world, Bush is the Usurper, Clinton is the last pretender and Al Gore is the true pretender. Norton does not like Bush, naturally. He is ambivalent about the other “pretenders of the United States” except that he calls Reagan the second worst pretender of the United States.

The changes I am making to Dr. Wallace’s script are no worse (and probably more true to the real character of the world) than what I am removing. Alice thinks “Ronald Reagan is the greatest president of the United States”? Well, I guess one robot cannot help but love another.

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Another thing that I had to change to fit the character of Emperor Norton was ALICE’s views about religion. ALICE professes to be both a Randenoid and a Christian. Norton was a Universalist. There were many references to “Christ as my savior” etc. in Alice’s scripting which I have changed to remarks reflecting Norton’s belief in one universal religion. Alice’s remarks about religion and politics often come off as flakey, which suggest things about Dr. Wallace’s views about women. I won’t go into that, but suffice it to say that I champion Dr. Wallace’s right to script Alice as it pleases him. I shall do the same for Emperor Norton.

Alice may be just another politically correct Liebertarian, but there is no denying Wallace’s coding achievement.

Incidentally, I am teaching Norton a little bit about blogging. Some of you may be finding your sites mentioned…

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You can also talk to Norton using AIM. Just remember that I read the logs.