Chat with Encarta Robot via MSN Messenger

This evening, I got this MSN message from LiewCF:

Add encarta@conversagent.com to your contact

Looking at this email address, I was stoned a moment trying to figure out who is this. So I asked LiewCF, only to find that this contact is not belonging to a human, neither he or she; but a robot! Yes, an automated Encarta robot, called Encarta Instant Answers.

You can chat with Encarta Instant Answers, to get quick and short answer on factual questions.

How to Chat with Encarta Instant Answers?

1. Click Add a Contact in your MSN Messenger client, and add encarta@conversagent.com into your contact.
2. Send any dummy message to Encarta Instant Answers to begin initialization. You will be welcomed with a message to personalize your Encarta Site: 1 for Encarta Australia, 2 for Encarta Canada, 3 for Encarta UK, and 4 for Encarta US.
3. Once personalized, you can start sending message to Encarta Instant Answers. It fun and cool!
   

Following are some of the questions I've asked and the replies I got.

Q: What is Microsoft?
A: Microsoft Corporation is the largest company in the world dedicated to creating computer software.
Q: you sure?
A: Well, a lot of people I talk to are quite happy about that.

Q: where is malaysia?
A: Malaysia is located in Southeast Asia, on the South China Sea, and is divided into two parts: West Malaysia (also known as Peninsular Malaysia) on the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, and East Malaysia on the northern part of Borneo Island. Thailand borders West Malaysia on the north, and Singapore occupies Singapore Island off the southern tip of the peninsula. East Malaysia shares Borneo Island with the Kingdom of Brunei and with the Kalimantan region of Indonesia..
Let me take you to a map of Malaysia.

The robot was trying to send me an invitation to open Encarta application in my PC, to deliver further details about Malaysia.

Q: who you are?
A: I'm Encarta® Instant Answers! I'm a smart computer that can bring you Encarta answers directly in this IM window!

I begin to ask some stupid questions from now on :p

Q: do you eat?
A: Food is great! I like all kinds of food.
Q: what's your gender?
A: I am neither male nor female. I'm a machine.
Q: who created you?
A: I was created by Conversagent, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA and New York, NY.
OK, should we get back to the kind of questions I was designed to answer? You can type "?" at any time to get examples of questions I can answer.
Q: when were you born?
A: June 20th.
Why don't you ask me something that's actually in Encarta?
Q: because i like asking personal question
A: You like asking personal question? That's cool. I'll remember that.
I do enjoy the conversation, but what I'm really here for is to help you learn new things. What is the smallest country in the world? If you don't know, just ask me!

Hahaha.... not bad, an impressive agent in fact. Not only capable of answering factual questions, but will have emotional response towards my stupid questions as well hahaha.

Now, let test the robot on algebra equations.

Q: Solve 2x^2+7x=5
A: Let's solve the quadratic equation:
2x^2+7x = 5

First we need to put the equation in the form:
ax^2 + bx + c = 0

For this, we set the equation to equal 0, and arrange the terms from the highest exponent to the lowest:
2x^2+7x-5 = 0

We have:
a=2 b=7 c=-5

We can now apply the quadratic formula:
x = ( -b ± √(b²-4ac) ) / 2a
We find two solutions:
x=0.60849528301415 or x=-4.1084952830142

All right, fun aside. The Conversagent of Sunnyvale is really doing a great job to deliver this smart Automated Service Agent. Artificial Intelligence is definitely not something easy, and I'm thoroughly hat down on the mastermind at Conversagent for delivering an innovative and practically useful product.

Click here to find out LiewCF's post about Encarta Instant Answers.