This means that this specific trigger could be one of the following: Under normal circumstances, SuperScript would just randomly choose one, but I have used the flag here so that if the person asks again, they will get a response rather than have the trigger ignored as a duplicate.įirst, I am using some new things in the trigger: alternates and optionals. In this case, I have specified three replies to the trigger.
I should note here that replies are in all caps solely to remain consistent with the interface in the Alien movie and not due to any requirement of SuperScript.
INITIAL READINGS INDICATE THAT COMMUNICATION IS A WARNING Once everything is installed, you can create a new bot project via: I won't regurgitate the nicely done SuperScript installation guide here other than to reiterate that you will need both Node.js and Mongo installed to get started. Most of the conversational ideas in my MUTHUR bot and the script quotes in this article are taken from the Alien script on The Daily Script.Īs a side note, there is apparently some sort of MUTHUR bot that was created as part of some promotional material for the upcoming movie, although it does not respond to some of the basic queries from the original film when I tried it. Let's take a deeper look at some of the features and how SuperScript makes them possible. Keep in mind that the bot I created is still a work in progress - there were a lot of interactions I had planned that I simply haven't been able to complete yet and improvements to existing interactions that I'd like to see. So, much of the chat bot I ended up creating is more "inspired by" rather than direct recreation of the movie. Admittedly, there is limited direct interaction with MUTHUR in the movie (most occurring in the scene above), but there is quite a bit of implied interaction. For instance, she knows that the "enhancement request" is related to the question about special order 937 and so on.Īlien being one of my favorite movies, this inspired me to see if I could recreate MUTHUR as a chat AI. If you watch the scene above, the MUTHUR AI clearly understands the context of conversation. One of the interesting things about MUTHUR compared to other computer AI in science fiction movies is that every interaction with her on screen is done via text.
MUTHUR is the AI that runs the Nostromo in the movie Alien. Of course, AI has been the subject of endless science fiction, which is where I took the inspiration for my demo project. The MUTHUR DemoĪ conversational bot is arguably a simplistic form of artificial intelligence in that it mimics a human behavior while appearing to understand both language and context within a conversation. It was something that personally fascinated me and, in this article, I hope to introduce you to how SuperScript works by discussing a sample project I created with it. SuperScript is an engine for creating bots using JavaScript and Node.js that helps overcome some of these difficulties by offering a way to do things like normalize user inputs and build complex conversations. This is where a tool like SuperScript comes into play. In some cases, you may even want your bot to understand the nature of a conversation, so that every input isn't looked at in a silo, completely disconnected with what has previously been communicated.
This is complicated by the fact that there are a hundred ways to say any one thing. You have to be able to receive text (or in some cases, convert voice commands to text), parse it and match it to a response. However, creating bots isn't necessarily easy. This desire to text rather than talk has led to the increasing utility of bots to the degree that banks can now understand emoji. Even things like one-on-one customer support seem to be increasingly chat rather than call. We SMS rather than call or chat via Slack rather than video via Skype. Today, we might talk to our machines (Siri, Alexa, etc.), but, if we want to communicate with people, we use text. Let's admit it - speaking to other people is so last century.