Jan 13 2010
Psychic Computer Genie
This is impressive. Really. Of course, it is not psychic – it is just a bit a clever code. It is also nothing new – it has been around in one form or another for years. You can buy these types of 20 questions game computers for personal use.
I have played with these before, and this one seems particularly effective.
Here’s the game – you think of a character and then the “genie” asks you a series of 20 questions. At the end it guesses your character. I played against it with Spock, Max Planck, Stanley Kubrick, Captain Jack Sparrow, and HAL 9000 – the Akinator guessed right every time. But then I was thinking of James Randi – Akinator guessed Don Vito, but then after 28 guesses came up with James Randi. The Akinator even got PZ Myers on the third try.
I think this program is more impressive than the off-the-shelf versions because it is website-based and therefore benefits from the playing of thousands of individuals. When it guesses your character it will tell you how many times it has been played before – over 20 times for Max Planck. So it has a lot of data.
Also – these programs play 20 questions different than we humans do. We tend to zero in on our target categorically. This program does that a little, but also throws in apparently random questions – “does your character have a mustache?” It does not seem as systematic as a human 20 question guesser, but internally it is.
I also wonder if the 20th question is a bit vague on purpose. It leaves you with the impression that the Akinator is way off track, and then suddenly it guesses your character and you are all the more impressed. The final couple of questions are not obviously close to the right answer, as is typical of human 20 questions.
In any case – it’s a good way to waste some time at work. You have to get pretty obscure to beat the Akinator, and as more people play it seems likely that it will be able to guess more and more obscure characters. Although I wonder if the number of people in its database becomes so large it will be difficult to parse them with 20 questions.
Although – if we assume that every question can divide the characters in its database in half, with 20 questions you can parse over 1 million characters. So that will probably take quite a long time to overwhelm, and then of course with each additional question that figure doubles.
So I suspect the Akinator will just get more impressive over time.
Thanks to FunkyFredFrog from the SGU boards for this one.
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41 Responses to “Psychic Computer Genie”
Awesome!
It failed to get Richard Wiseman within 40 questions, but did come up with Derren Brown as the first suggestion, which is pretty good.
Beautifully, it didn’t get Steven Novella, and suggested Alex Jones along the way.
The final question was “Is your character a religious figure?”
I also wondered what a neuroscientist did in his free time.
Attempts for Dr. Novella resulted in PZ Meyer, Dan Savage, Bruce Schneier and finally Steven Novella. tada!
I stumped it with Data’s Cat from Star Trek: TNG, Spot. Oddly, of the 40 questions, a number were repeats. Anybody else get that same problem? It asked some conflicting questions as well; for instance, it first asked me if my character spoke, which he didn’t, and later asked me if he spoke a couple of different languages. Pretty cool though! Thanks for sharing!
I’m not sure that you are correct Steve, about it purposefully asking seemingly random questions at the end. I went trough with Gimli twice and not only did it ask me some different questions, even though I answered the same ones with the same answers, but it gave me the answer around question 14 both times.
I thought of Steve Novella and the genie guessed at Mehmet Oz. Now that’s a huge FAIL!
hmmm well despite telling it English, scientist, woman, nobel prize, it didn’t get Dorothy Hodgkin
Let’s keep doing Steve Novella, he’ll get to know him eventually
EL – you may be right. I was just wondering about the 20th question. It may also just be due to the fact that the questions do not seem that specific generally.
“Does your character have a dog?” was not a particularly random last question for Jonathan Archer (but it was up to 32 questions, with 3 guesses, at that point).
I tried Steven Novella. Got Governor Bobby Jindal. D’oh!
17 times, 17 correct. Damn. Even got Leonard Bernstein right, with a few “don’t knows” as answers.
Tried it twice on Canadian politicians. Got it right with Canadian PM Paul Martin. Missed by a mile on governor general Ray Hnatyshyn. Said I was thinking about my local mayor.
It was able to guess Steven Novella in 29 guesses with 13 others using Steven Novella.
On question 20 it guessed Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Good company indeed!
It correctly guessed Steve Novella!
I had a similar result to steve, in a pretty conclusive manner. It was homing on Thor, having ascertained that my character stood on two legs, was a god or goddess, was from the Scandinavian era, wielded a hammer…then it asked me if the character was shaved.
I would love to know the specifics of how something like this narrows down its database.
It guessed Leeloo Dallas correctly after 17 questions, but it failed to guess Louis Leakey after 40 questions 3 separate times. Oh, well.
It didn’t get Mae-Wan Ho. Didn’t even have her in its lexicon.
It just got James Randi on the first try for me. Same thing with Rebecca Watson.
It also got “Me” the first time, but it just said “You!” with a monkey picture so I’m not sure if that counts. Not that it would have any other way of guessing me, I suppose.
Assuming the program is mining your answers to improve the database, I wonder how susceptible the program is to data poisoning.
Some really clever programmer/hacker could probable write an app capable of poisoning the database to produce some interesting results.
I managed to stump it with author A.S. Byatt, although it did guess Doris Lessing at one point, which I guess is close. It’s a fun thing, I don’t know why anyone would think is is really magic though.
Stumped him with Jonathan Miller, who you might have seen interviewing Dawkins and Dennett, among others, in The Atheism Tapes (footage culled from his BBC mini-series, Brief History of Disbelief).
The genie correctly guessed Obi-Wan Kenobi, Elie Wiesel, Buster Keaton, and Job (biblical character), and Curious George. I stumped it with David Wolpe, a rabbi in Los Angeles who wrote several books and is famous in the American Jewish community, but I added his name to the database.
I tried Sigourney Weaver, which I thought should be an easy person for the Akinator, but it didn’t guess her in three tries (although I wasn’t certain about a few of my answers).
Anyway, you’re a clever Fellow, Steve (of the CSI type, that is). Congratulations!
Bowled it out leg before wicket with Aristotle – not that arcane, you’d think?
just got Aristotle first try
It failed to guess Rachel Carson in three tries.
: -)
Haha, awesome. Got Jacque Fresco at first try.
It failed on Rebecca Watson for me.. I was quite unprepared for some of the questions: “Does your character have small breasts?” left me stumped…. it’s not a question I even considered it might ask. (For the record I had to answer “I don’t know” so possibly with more accurate breast information it may have found her
)
Boggled it first try. Forty questions, guesses including ‘Albert Einstein’, ‘Ede Teller’, and ‘Kurt Godel’. (My person was Leo Szilard.)
After giving up, it put up a panel of folks that he wasn’t in, and so I entered his name, and then it put up a panel of a dozen or so “Leo”s including Leo Kottke and Leo Szilard and asked for a discriminator (I used “Nuclear Physicist”) and then asked if the Leo Szilard it knew was the same or not.
Hopefully it will recognize him now…
It’s pretty amazing. My first try was Dick Feynman, and by the last question, I thought there was no way it would get it, but it did…
Then I tried Rebecca Watson and it came up with… Sarah Palin.
Thats a lot of fun, and it was pretty impressive, but it couldn’t guess Charlie Chan, after two tries, despite the fact that the first time, the questions leading up to the guess led me to believe that it was all over it. I think that it may have gotten tripped up when it asked it the character was American, and I said yes (he was Chinese-American).
It didn’t have Mary Whiton Calkins or Harriet Martineau – I guess dead female philosophers-turned-psychologists/sociologists just aren’t in its database. But, hey, pretty damned amazed it got Emile Durkheim!
It got the rather easy “Terry Pratchett”, but gave me barbie instead of Lassie. An easy mistake to make I suppose.
That thing is WAY too addictive! I should have been asleep hours ago!
It got Slartibartfast on the first try, Hari Seldon on the 2nd.
I think perhaps the reason for the seemingly unrelated questions just before it guesses is that the computer will not make a guess before 20 questions, so if it knows the answer sooner than that, it will just toss out random questions to refine its database. My husband had me try Pete Carroll (coach of USC football team) and it clearly knew the answer after about 13 or 14 questions because of the specific questions it was asking (associated with the color red, has white hair, etc.), but then it asked several more completely off-base questions before guessing correctly at 20.
kikyo- It will guess before the 20th question. It guessed Isaac Newton correctly in only 13 guesses for me.
I’ve noticed that it expects the wrong answer quite a lot. Especially for questions like “Has your character ever killed humans?”, the expected answer is almost always “No” even when it should be “Yes” or “Probably”. Maurice Ravel and George Orwell/Eric Blair, for instance, were both volunteer soldiers and almost certainly killed humans. It also tends to expect “No” for “Is your character interested in Politics” or “Is your character a writer” when those aren’t the character’s most well known attributes, but still fairly well known and/or important.
In the Internet age, it’s damned easy to check a biography…
This is AMAZING
Wow, only got about 13 questions and he guessed it right 
Though, my character is both, an actor and a singer so it is pretty easy to guess from color of hair and eyes, I think.
But wow, awesome
I stumped it with Jean-Luc Picard… very surprised at that…
It got Inara Serra in just a few questions. But knowing I’m a middle-aged guy who likes science fiction, it wasn’t a difficult guess.
Still – very impressive.