The golden coin

Long time ago, there was a king who had an adult boy, the prince. The wise king was so generous with his son and used to give him each day a golden coin.
Again, everyday the son used to take the coin and stand on his balcony and look down at the poor people then with a gesture of his hands he would sway the coin far away and laughing at people fighting to catch it!
Time passed by and the prince reached an age where his wisdom should have been developed, however the king was not satisfied by his son’s actions, so he declared: “Son, I want you out of my palace, out without anything, you may not return here nor shall I recognize you as my son, you are welcome back anytime you can earn a golden coin and bring it to me!”
So the prince set off with no money or cloth, he was like those people who he used to throw the coin at.
The prince witnessed the hard life and how it is not simple earn money. He worked hard day and night, suffered, changed jobs, worked what is not elegant for a prince, and after 6 month of hard work, the prince finally earned what amounts to a golden coin.
It was then when the prince returned to the palace shouting: “Let me in, I am the prince and have a golden coin, let me see the king”. The king was so delighted to see his son, who finally realized the value of hard-work, then the king said to his son proudly: “I may now retire and you can safely take charge of my kingdom”

Origin: Unknown
Heard from: KC

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The real mother

Long ago, two women presented themselves in front of a wise king, each woman claim that the little boy in front of them is hers. The first woman cries to the king saying “This boy is my boy” while the other woman also cries “Don’t believer her, this boy is my boy”.
The king, being wise and wanting to settle this argument declared: “We will have the boy split in two. You take this part, he said to the first mother and you take that part, he said to the second mom!”.
Since the king had serious expressions on his face, the real mother of this child cried out loud: “No, no, this is not my child, let her have him!”
This way, the real mother showed her true love for the child and sparred his life, by showing sacrifice and real love.

Origin: Unknown
Heard from: KC

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Can computers chat like humans?

The first time, when I was like 17 years old, I found a program called Eliza (or virtual girlfriend), don’t recall well, a chatting bot. I was a newbie programmer back then, thus this program really impressed me because it was able to understand more than basic questions and it could retain memory and recite what it newly learned.

Today while writing a small introductory article about Expert Systems, I stumbled upon A.L.I.C.E website (http://www.alicebot.org/) which hosts a set of projects aimed at emulating the human brain and how humans communicate and process natural language. To get a feel of this, try to chat with one of the bots:

http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=f5d922d97e345aa1

Also checkout the image gallery: http://www.alicebot.org/documentation/gallery/ which shows the graph of the bot’s memory and knowledge-base.

I think one day, machines will evolve more and be able to process natural language as easily as human does, it is a matter of time.