Lab Eleven

Searching the WWW
Lab Resource Links
 

altavista
excite
hotbot
infoseek
lycos
mckinley
webcrawler
yahoo
google

metacrawler

Eval #1

Eval #2 


Preliminaries

This lab is meant to be an introduction to the effective use of the WWW for locating valuable information and give you an opportunity to learn more about AI than what is presented in class.

Goals

You will be using search engines to search the web for information. In the margins of this lab, there are links to several. You are not limited to these. Feel free to use any search engines you wish. 

Advanced Searches: Besides just searching for keywords, many search engines offer advanced searching using techniques such as Boolean logic. Boolean logic involves the use of operators such as AND, OR and NOT to require specific combinations of keywords.

To Do

This lab has four parts to it. The first three parts involve searching the web for information. The fourth part requires you to think about what you have learned and apply that knowledge to answering a question. You must use Microsoft Word to write your results for all four parts.

You must site your references. In this case, the reference is the URL (Uniform Resource Locator - web page address) where you found the information that you used to answer the question.

  1. Search the WWW to learn about fuzzy logic. Give a description of fuzzy logic in your own words and discuss why this type of logic is appropriate in some expert systems.
  2. Using a search engine of your choice, search the web to find out:
    1. A brief description of the ACM Turing Award and what the actual award is.
    2. Who was the 2000 ACM Turing Award Recipient and what was his/her contribution to technology?.
  3. Have a conversation with a computer: A.L.I.C.E BOT. Go to AliceBot's web site

    4.  

     

    Explore some of the links on the page to learn about alice/aiml.

    In the upper right corner there is a link to have a conversation with Alice. Go there and have a conversation with alice, subject of your choice.

    Write a report on AliceBot. In your report:

    1. Describe the origins of AliceBot, explain what AliceBot is, and what AIML is.
    2. Explain what the Turing Test is.
    3. Describe the nature of your conversation with AliceBot.
    4. Based on your conversation with AliceBot, in your opinion, does AliceBot pass the Turing Test?

      5.  

       

      Besure to explain your evaluation and use excerpts from your conversation to support your conclusion..

  4. Discuss legal issues involved if an expert system provides erroneous information and the result is actual bodily harm or a severe monetary loss. Explain all of the possible liable parties and why are they potentially liable.

Hand In

The answers to the questions above must be submitted in report form. You must have a title page which includes a title and your name. Center this information both vertically and horizontally.

The report should be self-contained. In other words, do not just include your answers. 

Each part should be a subsection with a title in larger font and bold. So, there should be four parts.

You must use footnotes to cite your references. 

Your document must have page numbers (omit the page number on the title page). They should be at the bottom and centered.

The last page of your report should be a bibliography that has an entry for each web page that you looked at to complete this assignment. 

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Maintained by Barbara Bracken
Last Modified 12/09/03