Reddit, Repercussions and Relatives

An interview with New York Times Best-selling author David Thorne, of www.27bslash6.com
By Alex H

Waiting for David Thorne to show up for an interview, at a seedy bar in downtown Toronto, the thought that he might not show up, as some form of prank, crossed my mind. Or worse, he might. Glancing at my wrist and wondering if I still had to time to leave before he arrived, I heard a deep Australian accent state "Sorry I'm late, a dingo stole my baby." I first wrote to Thorne over a year ago when I ordered his first book, The Internet is a Playground, and, along with around a hundred others, didn't receive my copy. After an exasperating delay due to delivery issues with Thornes's publisher, and a well documented run-in with one of Thorne's now ex-employees, my copy finally arrived four months later. Admittedly, it was worth the wait. Learning that Thorne was visiting Toronto this week for a snowboarding trip, I emailed him asking if he would be up for an interview for www.avbrand.com over a few drinks. He replied "Sounds good. As long as you are paying for them."

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Over on one of my sites, www.uer.ca, I have a chatroom for members to use. Although the site is dedicated to Urban Exploration, the chatroom often features a variety of topics and usually contains anywhere from 4 to 20 people at any time of day.

Around the holiday season, to make the chatroom more interesting, I switch on a bot that I wrote called the "Santa Bot". It's an automated chat bot that interacts with the participants in the room, and appears to them just like any other user. He responds to direct questions, and also responds to select statements. He also speaks at other times.

I'm not much for AI (Artificial Intelligence) -- I've never had much interest trying to write something that pretends to be a person. Most chatbots out there are extremely complex, and they work by trying to figure out what you mean when you talk to them. Saying "How are you" usually results in a response like "I am fine", since the bot has either been programmed to understand that question or has learned the appropriate response.

Writing that kind of algorithm seemed much too complex for me -- I just wanted a simple bot that I could use to entertain the chat users. So, over the last few years, the Santa Bot has evolved into its current incarnation, which results in wonderful interactions such as this one:

[23:15:04] <Aleksandar> santa, you dont know what fus do rah is?
[23:15:07] <Santa> its better you dont know what that is

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