W2C

Today's chatbots seem to be stupid, right? But in 10 years? What could we expect?

Agents of change
"Autonomous agents could one day play a key role in everything from setting market prices to creating more resilient networks."

"Over the past year, NASA has been uploading software into the Earth Observing-1 satellite, turning it into a testbed for autonomous agents. The agents -- software programs that are able to learn and can function independently -- are used to manage experiments and operate the spacecraft."
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/story/0,10801,95672,00.html

Immaterial Girl Speaking of the Future with Ramona
"Surprise, embarrassment, and misunderstanding are all hallmarks of a real conversation, a journalist notes after conversing with KurzweilAI.net's chatbot host, Ramona."
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0617.html

Beware of Bots Bearing Messages
"If you get an instant message from someone with an unfamiliar screen name in the near future, you might want to think twice before getting emotionally invested in the conversation.

That's because you may be talking with Chatting AIM Bot, a free service that lets anyone play a devious practical joke on a friend, in which an artificially intelligent AOL instant message, or AIM, bot carries on an innocuous, 10-minute conversation before finally lowering the boom and informing the unwitting human at the other end they've been had."
http://wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64888,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

Chatterbot - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

Robotic Nation Evidence
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com

Alice chatbot wins for third time
"A computer chat program called Alice has won a prestigious prize for human-like conversation for the third time."
Link
Source: BBC News