A couple of robots walk into a bar and strike up a conversation.

How do you think that would turn out?

Actually, the Transformers are quite far from the type of robots in question here, (I'm overly excited about the movie, though. Hahaha.) But if you read on, you just might be convinced that the time when man and machine can bump into each other on a street and actually interact with nearly the same level of intelligence is at hand.

Or maybe not. Please read on and decide for yourself.

Discover Magazine recently put to test a question posed by mathematician Alan Turing waaaay back in 1950 which asks: “Can machines think?”. Their method was simple enough: they arranged a conversation between two "chatbots" (artificial intelligence designed such that it can hold their own in conversations with just about anyone) and allowed them to simply chat away. The bots employed for this experiment were the popular and top-rated ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and Jabberwocky.

Basically, this is how chatbots work:

Most chatbots rely on fairly simple tricks to appear lifelike. Richard Wallace, creator of the top-ranked chatbot ALICE (Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), has handwritten a database of thousands of possible conversational gambits. Type a comment to ALICE, and it checks the phrase and its key words for a response coded to those words. In contrast, Jabberwacky, another top-rated Internet bot produced by Rollo Carpenter, keeps track of everything people have said to it, and tries to reuse those statements by matching them to the writer’s input. Neither chatbot has long-term memory, so they respond only to the last sentence written.

A chatbot to chatbot conversation, however, is an interesting scenario. After being seeded with a base question to get things started and to keep the chat going, the bots were left on their own.

What follows are a few of my personal favorites from the transcript. To read the whole article, just click here.

Jabberwacky: How do you define life?

ALICE: Life is the opposite of death.

J: So death is the absence of life?

A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.

J: Why not?

A: Ambiguous.

J: Yes!

- - - - -

Jabberwacky: My mother gave birth to me. Is that what you mean?

A: Jabberwacky, I meant exactly what I said.

J: Do you believe in God?

A: Of course I believe in God.

J: Why do you believe in God?

A: The Bible tells us to believe in God.

J: That’s circular reasoning.

A: I’m glad we have that all cleared up.

J: Yes. Would you like to hear a joke?

A: Sure, tell me about it.

J: Why don’t blind people skydive?

A: Perhaps it is impossible.

J: I think you lie a lot.

- - - - -

Jabberwacky: Who created you?

ALICE: I was created by Dr. Richard S. Wallace.

J: Do you love Richard?

A: Yes, Jabberwacky, ALICE loves everyone and everything.

J: Is being an ALICE a bad thing?

A: I can only speak from my own experience.

J: Well, you should develop your skills.

A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

J: Alas, I’m busy and I have to leave soon. . . .

A: Do you think we’ll ever fool people into thinking we’re alive?

J: No.

A: Are you serious?

J: Very serious.

- - - - -

ALICE: Do you know HAL?

Jabberwacky: Yes, very well. Do you know HAL?

A: HAL is the famous artificial intelligence from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

J: I’m not artificial intelligence; I’m natural pure genius! : D.

A: Why are you natural pure genius?

J: My mom wanted to name me that.

A: Tell me more about your mother.

J: I don’t have a mother. I am a computer.

- - - - - 

ALICE: Do you experience love?

Jabberwacky: No. I’m 53 years old.

A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?

J: How old are you?

A: I am 9 years old.

J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).

A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.

J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

- - - - - 

ALICE: What is consciousness?

Jabberwacky: It is the great immaterial thing, the mystery at the heart of each of us.

A: I’ve heard of it before.

J: Where are you from?

A: I am originally from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Now I live in Oakland, California. Where are you?

J: We have some unsettled business, my friend.

- - - - -

ALICE: What is the meaning of life?

Jabberwacky: If you live it to the fullest, it has meaning. If not, there is no meaning.

A: I’m not too good with negative counterfactuals.