0 - Journey To Robot

"Jen's Cat": Some digital art I created.

I decided to create this blog to track my progress on projects and get in the habit of writing things down, all while keeping it fun and simple. After all, “If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself ”(Einstein).

I've been thinking for a while about building a talking AI with a personality, so 3 days ago I set off on my journey. I know it's not something you can build in one night...or three...or a hundred. Maybe a hundred, but I'm pretty enthusiastic. The hardest part I see is finding the time while studying full time and working, but I'm sure I'll figure that out. My goal is to build something that can pass a Turing test ¹. But how do Turing tests work? Are there specific guidelines? Is it like a Voight-Kampff machine ²? (Would be cool if it was) I'll have a post up soon on what I found out!

But for now, here's what I've been up to, summarized into bullet points for your reading pleasure:

• I read a couple articles on twitter bots and was fascinated by the complexity of some, and simplicity of others, and figured I'd start there.
• Then I thought "How can I create something that won't become the next Tay.Ai".
• I made a feature list with "word exclusion" written at the top.
• Started reading about the Twitter API.
• Chose python as my programming language, due to the large amount of AI/Chatbot related libraries.
• Googled "Is learning python hard?". Which lead me to a website called "Learn Python The Hard Way" which answered my question.
• Chugged away at Code Academy and a python textbook for a couple hours.
• Searched for existing twitter bot programs written in python (Why re-invent the wheel?)
• Found a couple contestants, and chose the winner: TwitterFollowBot for its simplicity, and its General Public Licence.
• Familiarized myself with the program's functions,then started writing a pseudo-coded² schedule, then hacked away at my features list.
• Coded my pseudo-code.
• Finally, I made a couple functions to handle following/liking etc. and a couple others, including "electricDreams", and "tron". All of which I'll go over in the next post!

¹Turing Test - a method for determining whether or not a computer is capable of thinking like a human.

² Voight-Kampff machine : A fictional machine used in the Blade Runner series to determine whether or not someone is an android.

³ Pseudo-code - a detailed yet readable description of what a computer program or algorithm must do.

As always, any comments, suggestions, or questions are greatly appreciated! 
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