Robots Discuss Politics
Finally, I can discuss politics with robots… it is truly what I have been waiting for… (insert eye roll here)…
IT was late in the day, rain was streaking the windows of a converted warehouse in San Francisco and the robot was not behaving. Represented by a talking head on a flat-screen monitor, and equipped with voice-recognition software, the artificial intelligence computer - known as DiNA - was designed to chat with visitors about current affairs. She is supposed to be a political animal, or more precisely, machine. But at this point in early November, just a few weeks before making her New York debut, she sounded rather clueless. When asked her opinion of the war in Iraq, she called it a “silly question.” When asked whether she supported President Bush, she didn’t recognize his name.
The robot’s programmer, Colin Klingman, was taken aback. “She has a lot to say on Bush, believe me,” he said. “I’ll have to check the code.”