When life, the universe and everything is all getting too much, Emacs has doctor.el to help.
To consult the doctor type M-x doctor.
OBJECTIVE: Explore a symbolic system that acts as a psychotherapist by re-phrasing the user's input in its responses. This is based on ELIZA, the first chatbot ever.
This homework also requires you to explore LISP - one of the first programming languages, and one that is still widely used in AI.
Follow these steps:
A. Install emacs. Run the "doctor" program under emacs.
B. Record one plausible interaction and a negative interaction.
C. Edit the lisp program doctor.el to improve the functionality in some way.
D. Show an improvement by providing one or two sample interactions BEFORE and AFTER your edit doctor.el in emacs.
To get started with eLisp, open the buffer *scratch*. You can start with the tutorial at http://emacs-doctor.com/learn-emacs-lisp-in-15-minutes.html. Follow the examples in your *scratch* buffer and learn some basic ideas such as lists, regular expressions, mapcar etc. Beyond this there are lots of resources for learning eLisp.
But the quickest way to learn swimming is to get thrown in the river.
You can learn by making small changes in doctor.el and seeing what they do.
Look things up as you move deeper!
Extra Credit for significant changes!!
Note: This is NOT a trivial exercise. Please get started ASAP!!
You will have to set the ball rolling by sending a mail to someone in CC to enable your web area. Please visit the CC on early Friday if this is not done since they may not work over the weekend.
Deadline: Your web submission must be online at home.iitk.ac.in/~yourid/cs365/hw0/ by midnight on Monday Jan 11.