Hopefully I’m not the last one in the world to find out about this, but I just found the neatest site: 20q. It’s an AI implementation of the game of 20 Questions, and it seems to be pretty good. I just tried it with “a math textbook” in mind, and it got “textbook.” Next I tried something ab it more abstract: “the month of January,” to which it guessed “the season of summer.” Not half bad, considering that it’s starting with a blank slate each time and it’s as dumb as a condition code multiplexer. (Computer engineer joke. Sorry.)

Check it out. I’m sure you can stump it without much effort, but you may be surprised at what it does get. (It just guessed “logarithm” when I was thinking “supralapsarianism”–maybe I threw it off when I said supralapsarianism could bring joy to some people. Accurate answers help, I suppose.)

Post in the comments some of the things it got and didn’t get.

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• Posted by Tim on Thursday, September 23, 2004 at 8:29:16 am PDT
• Category: Miscellany
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