• What an abusive chatbot can teach us about the art of conversation, Tim Harford, Financial Times, 18 Mar 2022. Also here and here.

• MGonz re-enactments at 9:45 to 15:25.
• More MGonz re-enactments at 29:45 to 30:30.
• I absolutely love this.

• "Una breve historia de la inteligencia artificial venciendo a los humanos" ("A brief history of artificial intelligence beating humans"), Krypton Solid, 1 Mar 2022. "El secreto de mGonz era que estaba programado para ser un imbecil."

• Series of AI programming exercises using Ancient Brain. For use in any AI course.

The biggest event of my career in years is the launch of my site "Ancient Brain" on 12 Feb 2018, the culmination of years of thought and work in AI.

Go there. Get an account. And start coding!

• Ancient Brain

It has been a long journey. The ultimate origin of the ideas that led to Ancient Brain is a document I wrote in 1999, which started a project called the "World Wide Mind".

• Let the Code Live: A call to build the AI Web, Mark Humphrys, 5 Oct 1999.
• This dream is now reality.

• World-Wide-Mind development 1999 to 2018

I have written a number of user-login systems over the years. The first one I ever wrote was "MGonzNet" in 1989. In some ways, Ancient Brain is the descendant of MGonzNet.

• MGonzNet - The REXX source code (1989).

• Why Donald Trump is the first chatbot president, Ian Leslie, New Statesman, 13 Nov 2017. Hilarious article that compares President Trump to a stimulus-response chatbot, and in particular to my chatbot: "So here we are in 2017 and MGonz, having somehow assumed orange flesh, is president of the United States."

• Ian Leslie wrote a further piece: "Perpetual Enmity", RSA Journal, Issue 2 2018, 29th August 2018. See p.1 (or alt) and p.2.

• MGonz is mentioned on p.272 of the book Messy: How to Be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World (2016) by Tim Harford. See cover and index.

• MGonz is mentioned in A brief history of artificial intelligence beating humans by Alex Wiltshire, PC Gamer, Jan 6, 2016.

• Artificial Belligerence by Iva Cheung, Lexicon Valley blog, Slate, 16 Mar 2015. Interesting article on the difficulty of making a rude bot. Gives Jenny18 a mention.

• A computer just passed the Turing Test - but was it actually the first one? by Molly McHugh, The Daily Dot, June 8, 2014.

• Reddit thread

MGonz is mentioned in "The Stupidity of Computers", by David Auerbach, in n+1 magazine, Issue 13: Machine Politics, 22 Feb 2012.

As a result of the n+1 piece, MGonz moves into the art world.
Extract from "Pat Hoffie: Slogans" by Adam Jasper.
Article in Column, 2013, at the "ArtSpace" gallery, Sydney, Australia.
Article is about the 2013 exhibit "you gotta love it" by Pat Hoffie at the "ArtSpace" gallery.

I did the computer forensic work in 2007-12 for the defamation case against the "Rate Your Solicitor" site that led to a successful High Court order shutting down the site in Jan 2012.

• My computer forensic work successfully identified those operating the site, who were not open with their identities. I used a web beacon to run a PHP script to identify their IP addresses. (They should have used an anonymous proxy.)

• I also found deleted pages in the Internet Archive. (They should have used a Disallow line in robots.txt.)

• Justice Michael Peart in his ruling (High Court judgement [2012] IEHC 42) was impressed by my technical work: "It has taken the plaintiff some years to identify the relevant parties against whom the proceedings should be directed .. given the anonymous and pseudonymous nature of the material posted on the website. ... The plaintiff engaged the services of Dr. Mark Humphrys, BSc. Joint Hons (UCD), PhD (Cambridge), who is a lecturer in the School of Computing at Dublin City University to prepare a number of reports in order to assist in the identification of the relevant parties who operate and control the website. Among those identified were the first, second and third named defendants. ... The reports from Dr. Humphrys are extremely technical and thorough. I could not possibly do justice to the comprehensive contents of same by attempting a summary, beyond saying that it is pellucidly clear that the first named defendant runs the website here, and that it is hosted by the third named defendant" ... and so on.

MGonz is mentioned in the book: The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive (2011) by Brian Christian.
See pp.26-27 and p.82.

• The MGonz chatbot

• Not used: I did a radio interview in Apr 2011 on MGonz and related topics with Radiolab for New York Public Radio. They did not eventually use it, though, in their show: "Talking to Machines", 31 May 2011.

• Science writer Nick Statt, 1 Mar 2011, on MGonz: "Since 1966, ELIZA has been used as a universal foundation for future chatbots. But two events near the end of the 20th century would mark a new era for artificial intelligence - a famous incident in 1989 that many consider to be an inadvertent passing of the Turing Test and the introduction of the Loebner prize in 1991, which has now become an annual showcasing of artificial intelligence progression."
• OK, "a new era for artificial intelligence" is completely over the top. MGonz isn't as important as that. But please don't let me stop you!

• MGonz is mentioned in Mind vs. Machine, Brian Christian, the cover story of The Atlantic magazine, Mar 2011. One tiny correction: Username "SOMEONE" was not his actual username. I'm hiding his username to hide his identity.

The Atlantic magazine, Mar 2011.

• The sex bot and the Turing test, Andrew Brown, The Guardian, 4 Sept 2009.

• Why can't computers think?, The Question, The Guardian, 31 August 2009.

• Bernard Gorman gets PhD, 2008. Thesis title: Imitation Learning Through Games: Theory, Implementation and Evaluation

• Humphrys, Mark (2008), "How my program passed the Turing Test", Chapter 15 of Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer, Robert Epstein, Gary Roberts and Grace Beber (eds.), Springer, 2008. This is a scientific paper that: (a) will make you laugh, and: (b) contains adult themes and is not suitable for children.

Parsing the Turing Test (2008).

• My PhD "family tree" (Who supervised who)

Vincenzo Brunacci (born 1768).
My doctoral supervisor "ancestor".

• Steven Harford gets PhD, 2006. Thesis title: Content-Based Retrieval of Melodies using Artificial Neural Networks.

• AI: Changing Us, Changing Them, Nina Munteanu, Strange Horizons, 23 August 2004.

• John Kelleher gets PhD, 2003. Thesis title: A Perceptually Based Computational Framework for the Interpretation of Spatial Language in 3D Simulated Environments.

• AI Expert Newsletter, July 2003.

• Imaginary Friends, Sascha Segan, ABC News, 29th Aug 2000. Someone running a chatbot on AOL Instant Messenger.

• "My fair KI", Konrad Lischka, Spiegel online, 28th Aug 2000.

• Emotion-packed robots are on their way! by Jerome Burne, The Times of India, 29 Feb 2000.

• I think the above is a re-publication of a Sunday Times article, 20th Feb 2000. This will eventually come online again here.

• "Why on earth would I link to you?"

• Article on linking featured in Jakob Nielsen's Spotlight, 1999.

• The MGonz chatbot

• MGonz features in Ch.10 of Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel, January 2000. See author's site. You can look inside the book (though you can't see the relevant section).

• MGonz features in Ch.2 of The Darwin Wars, by Andrew Brown (see here and here), 1999. You can search inside the book and see the relevant section.

• MGonz features in Ch.7 of The Science of the X-Files by Jeanne Cavelos, 1998. You can look inside the book (though you can't see the relevant section).

• MGonz is featured in Invasion of the Internet Impostors by Michael McCormick, Internet Underground magazine, vol 1, issue 8, July 1996.