| annoybot |
An autonomous program intentionally designed to disrupt chat rooms. |
| anthropomorphism |
Attribution of human characteristics to machines, animals or things |
| artificial
intelligence |
The branch of computer science concerned with making computers behave
like humans. The term was coined in 1956 by John McCarthy at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. |
| cancelbot |
On Usenet, a program that issues cancel messages for Usenet articles. |
| chatterbot |
A bot capable of carrying on a conversation with a human. |
| daemon |
A process that runs in the background and performs a specified operation
at predefined times or in response to certain events. Typical daemon processes
include print spoolers, e-mail handlers, and other programs that perform
administrative tasks for the operating system. The term comes from Greek
mythology, where daemons were guardian spirits. The term daemon is a UNIX
term. |
| Loebner
Prize |
Dr. Hugh Loebner
pledged a Grand Prize of $100,000 and a Gold Medal (pictured above) for
the first computer whose responses were indistinguishable from a human's.
Each year an annual prize of $2000 and a bronze medal is
awarded to the most human computer. |
| MOO -- |
A MUD that is object orientes. MOOs are subseset of MUDs.
The programming instructions of a MOO allow users to alter the domain. |
| MUD
-- |
A Multi-User Dungeon (or Multi-User Dimension, a cyberspace
where users can take on an identity and interact with one another. |
| mailbot |
A program that filters email or performs other email upkeep functions. |
| modbot -- |
An autonomous program that moderates a newsgroup by filtering
out unwanted articles. |
| robot |
Short for robot, a program that runs automatically. |
| Robot Exclusion Protocol |
A standard for robot behavior on the Web aimed at protecting Web
servers from robot abuse. |
| Usenet |
A worldwide bulletin board system that can be accessed through the
Internet or through many online services. The USENET contains more than
14,000 forums, called newsgroups, that cover every imaginable interest
group. |
| tinyMUD |
A MUD that is not a game. TinyMUDs are sometimes called a
MUSH, multiple user shared hallucination. |
| Turing Test |
A test devised by the English mathematician Alan M. Turing to determine
whether or not a computer can be said to think like a human brain. |
| Web robot |
A bot that travels from hyperlink to hyperlink retrieving Web documents
and indexing information from them or bringing information back to a central
server for indexing. |