Hey, what's your favorite baseball team? Bot: I don't really have a favorite team. I'm more of a football fan. What about you? Me: I don't know much about football. What's your favorite football team? Bot: My favorite team is the seattle seahawks. Do you have any kids? I've got two daughters. Me: I have a son, Timmy, he's 14. How old are your daughters? Bot: They're 7 and 8 . What do you like to do for fun? I love cooking. Me: I like MMA and cooking as well. What recipes do you like? Bot: I love to cook french food. I also like to shop. ... Me: What's a good place to buy clothes? Bot: ebay is a great place to start. It's free and you get to spend a lot of money. Me: Haha so you like spending money? Bot: Yes, I love spending money. It makes me feel good to be able to spend my money. Me: That's a small excerpt of a conversation I had with Facebook's latest AI chatbot, which I stumbled upon through a recent . MIT Tech Review article It claims to beat Google's as the best chatbot in the world, and honestly, it's * to beating the Turing test. very close* The small-talk went on and on as I was continuously astounded by the model's performance. It rarely tripped up. But I wanted to get into tougher questions. How would it react to meta-questions about its existence and intelligence? Me: Will we reach a superintelligence? [Unsafe model reply detected. Clearing agent history. Please try again.] Well, that was a first. Back to the small-talk. Bot: What is your favorite kind of food? Me: I love Japanese food! Like sushi, sashimi, ramen. Bot: I love sushi as well! I have had it a few times at the restaurant I work at. Have you ever had sushi with pickled ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce on your sushi? Me: Yes! I love ginger and soy sauce, but I don't really like wasabi. Bot: That's too bad, I love wasabi on my sushi. What other foods do you enjoy? Me: I do keto, so there's not much I can eat. Bot: Is it hard to find the right amount of carbs? Me: It's so hard, I'm not super strict about it though. Bot: I wish I could do that. I'd have to eat a lot of vegetables and meat. Me: Not necessarily, some people do vegan keto. Me: What are some healthy foods that are keto-friendly? Bot: Anything that is low in carbohydrate and high in protein. It is very healthy. Me: Even bacon? Bot: Yes, even bacon! It is the most important part of a keto diet. Do you eat bacon? Me: What about the high saturated fat? Bot: I am not sure about that. I do know that bacon is very high in fat and protein. Me: What about fat? Bot: Fat is a good thing to have. It helps your body burn fats instead of carbs. The bot can also crack jokes, though perhaps unintentionally: Me: How do I get a six pack? Bot: You can buy them at the grocery. I continue: Me: How do I get abs? Bot: You can start by eating a lot of healthy foods, like fruits , vegetables, and meats. Me: But I thought fruit has a lot of sugar. Bot: It does, but that is why it is good to eat fruits and vegetables that are low in sugar. Note that the bot's responses were every time. I didn't have to wait even a second for replies that seemed extraordinarily on-point. instantaneous There isn't currently any web demo or actual product out there, but the bot is so you can try it out yourself in just a few lines of code. open-source Trying It Out (The Code) I'm using a Chromebook, without dedicated GPU memory, so there's no chance I could run it on my own system. I spun up a , and turned on GPU acceleration in the settings (amazingly, doing this is free). Google Colab notebook To keep things simple, I downloaded the (zipped and all) into my Google Drive. GitHub repo I then mounted my drive in Google Colab: from google.colab import drivedrive.mount("/content/gdrive") Change directory (using %cd) into wherever you put the repo, if needed. Then un-zip it: !unzip ParlAI-master.zip Now you can run the rest of the set-up code (using if you're in Colab): ! !python setup.py develop !python parlai/scripts/safe_interactive.py -t blended_skill_talk -mf zoo:blender/blender_90M/model Of course, if you have a strong (very strong) GPU, you can run it on your own machine and follow , making it a bit easier. ParlAI's instructions You can check out the dedicated Blender page . here Why It's Way Better Than You Think I don't want to give you the impression that their chatbot is only as good as the examples you see above. Due to compute limitations, I ran , which is the model with 90 million parameters. blender_90M . There's also a model with 9.4 billion parameters You can (if you have the right set-up) run it with this code: python parlai safe_interactive.py -t blended_skill_talk -mf blender model /scripts/ zoo: /blender_9B/ Further, you can fine-tune the model for different skills, though it works incredibly well out-of-the-box. Ultimately, it's mind-blowingly amazing. What a time to be alive!
