Automattic's chatbot for my blog

Start by reading the issue background and trying the linked chatbot at a8c.scripting.com. The issue does not identify repository files, tests, an entry point, or a concrete change; a contributor would first need a defined scope and success criteria before implementation could begin.

Background

As you may know a few months ago we tried creating a chatbot just for Scripting News stuff, and the results were less than amazing, so I decided to wait for another chance to try it out, and one came along a few weeks ago.

I've been working on a project with Automattic involving feeds and social media, and in a casual conversation a few weeks ago, it came up that they had been working with Seth Godin do a chatbot for his blog. By coincidence, I was talking with Seth about exactly this topic and was aware that he had worked out something, but I didn't know with who.

Everyone was very excited! So we decided to give it a whirl with Scripting News archives in OPML which they were able to download from GitHub.

Here it is --

And now we have something to try out.

https://a8c.scripting.com/

An example

Here's an example of a question I asked: What does dave think about Tesla?

This is what came back.

Dave Winer has expressed mixed opinions about Tesla. He adores driving his Tesla, often looking for excuses to drive somewhere, and finds it much more enjoyable than his Subarulink. He does think that Tesla has a big problem because of the lack of Carplay or Android Auto support, which inhibits the potential for an app ecosystemlink.

However, Dave has frustrations with the computer system of Tesla cars. He has mentioned that the temperature controls have been needlessly moved across updates, and other details about the interface that once were visible are now hiddenlink. He believes that these updates, which can alter the interface without forewarning, can lead to user confusion and frustrationlink. Despite operating their cars largely through tech industry standard UI, Dave finds that Tesla lacks an app ecosystem, which he regards as a must-have featurelink. He describes his Tesla as both a functional car and a 'fucked up' computer system, implying a disconnect between the two elementslink.

My comments

I have a lot to say about this.

1. Call me Dave, please.
2. I do love driving my Tesla. I think it's an incredible wonderful product. A recent piece I wrote sums it up, imho, much better than the chatbot did. But I guess I know myself better than it does? ;-)
3. And that was my hope and still is, that a chatbot would be able to teach me things about what I think, by showing me over time how my thinking has changed, and not at a superficial level. But I see that as aspirational. You can see where there's potential in the technology, and it's frustrating that it seems so far from achieving it.

Other questions I've asked, honestly, it got less right. For example, I asked what I thought was a very easy question -- who did Dave support for president in 2016? It didn't have any idea. How is that possible? I wrote so much about it.

But -- Automattic is an excellent development company, and this is just the beginning of what I hope will be a long experiment. I want this to work, as much as I wanted personal computer networks to work in the 80s and 90s, and now they do. We will get there. Will it be in time to save humanity? Not so sure about that. ;-)

I encourage everyone to try this, and give feedback. Let's play around, have fun, see if you can get me saying really stupid things (I'm sure that's no problem).

And thanks to the good folk at Automattic for coming out to play. ;-)