AskMerlin, your AI expert system guru oracle advisor

[Ron Stephens]

Ok, so this is what happens when Guido promotes CP4E. You get newbie,
duffer, weekend hackers doing whatever turns them on.

I make no claims that this code is anything more than a hack. Please
excuse it, but if anyone is interested, you can link to my programs
below. Thanks to the inventors of NLQ and multiChoiceGuesser! I hope you
can forgive me for hacking your code ;-))

#!/usr/bin/python
# AskMerlin is a weekend hack I did by putting together a short program
called NLQ,
# or natural language query, which can be found online at
http://gurno.com/adam/nlq/#download
# NLQ is a Class to take an inputted query and output 1. Keywords and 2.
also to categorize
# the type of question being asked. I am primarily interested in using
the Keywords
# extracted form a query by NLQ. I shamelessly modified NLQ to add many
more
# IGNORE_WORDS and otherwise spruce it up.
# Next, I utilized the multiChoise Guesser script that some nice person
posted
# on the newsgroup a couple weeks ago. This uses urllib to go out to the
web
# and judge teh appropriateness of a given answer by how many hits it
gets on Google
# when coupled with the original question in a Google search.
# My main contribution, such as it was, was simply to enable the program
to create
# choices in order to choose a most appropriate answer. This is done by
using
# NLQ to pick out Keywords form teh HTML page returned by Google in its
search
# on the question. This version, AskMerlin, currently takes a long time
# to come to an answer because it must do many web searches/ I have also
a simpler version
# called aNoDivisorAskMerlin that comes to a much quicker decision, btu
is not as good in the
# appropriateness of its answer's. In either case, you must wait
patiently while
# merlin considers his options...dependign on speed of your internet
connection.
# On my cable modem at home, AsKMerlin takes about three minutes.
# I am hoping that someone or other might give me ideas on how to
improve the
# intelligence behind Merlin's deliberations. This version is just a
hack to see if it works
# in principle. I have other ideas to increase "intelligence" but I need
more.
# Currently, Merlin is very low IQ, but he has potential for the future.

# Anyway, Merlin can already answer just about any question.
# Someday, perhaps he will even answer correctly or at least with wisdom

# ;-)))))))))))))

http://www.awaretek.com/AskMerlin.py

http://www.awaretek.com/aNoDivisorAskMerlin.py