20Q
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20Q is a project in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
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[edit] The Principle & Early Days
The principle is that the user thinks of something (either abstract or not) and then, the AI, on the 20Q website, asks you twenty questions, such as "Is it smaller than a breadbox?" or "Would you touch it with a ten foot pole?" The user can answer these questions with: Yes, No, Unknown, Irrelevant, Sometimes, Maybe, Probably, Doubtful, Usually, Depends, Rarely, or Partly. The project is based on the classic word game of "Twenty Questions," and by the computer game Animals, popular in the early 1970s, which used a somewhat simpler method to guess an animal. The A.I. has applications that go beyond the playing of the word game.
After you have answered the twenty questions it poses (sometimes fewer), 20Q makes a guess at what you are thinking of, and you can choose whether or not it is correct. If not, the AI asks some more questions, then guesses again. The 20Q AI uses a true neural network to pick the questions and to guess. It makes guesses based on what it has learned; it is not “programmed” with information or what the inventor thinks. It has learned by playing against people who visit the website and play against the online AI. Answers to any question are based on the players’ interpretations of the questions asked by the AI. The 20Q AI also makes its own judgment on how to interpret the information. It can be described as more of a folk taxonomy than an taxonomy. The AI's knowledge develops with every game played. In this regard, the online version of the 20Q AI can be inaccurate due to the fact that it gathers its answers from what people think not from what people know. For example, in its music version, if the player is thinking of U2, and answers the question "Are you from the U.K.?" as "No," and 20Q correctly guesses in the end, it currently says "Are you from the U.K.? You said No, I say Probably". But, it is early days for the music knowledgebase, and given that the original AI has been learning for more than eighteen years and has played more than 44 million games, there is time for the knowledgebase to learn and grow. In the original version, limitations of taxonomy are often overcome by the AI: for example, if the user was thinking of an "Horse" and answered "No" to the question "Is it an animal?", the AI is likely to guess correctly.
The 20Q A.I. is adaptable, scalable, modular and embeddable, and for this reason, it is possible for the A.I. to learn about more specific things, leading to new knowledgebases being created. The 20Q AI is now learning in twenty-one languages, as well as learning everything it can about music, sports, movies and television.
As noted by the inventor of the 20Q AI, Robin Burgener, the “Uncommon Knowledge” generated by the online AI is what it comes up with when something seems odd to it and it can’t fit it in with what it knows. The questions the 20Q AI asks at the end of a game are not made up by humans; it’s information 20Q thinks up on its own, generating answers based on what it has learned and what it knows. 20Q is not programmed with responses, nor with its “Uncommon Knowledge.” Over time, it will be able to make more refined distinctions. 20Q learns, and learns to make distinctions, through play—the more times you think of an object and play (answering correctly, it is hoped) the more it learns about that object. The online 20Q AI has about 10,000,000 synaptic connections, with more than 25,000 objects in its knowledgebase.
The 20Q AI was invented by Robin Burgener, of Ottawa, Canada, in 1988, and moved to the internet in 1995. With more than 100,000 people now playing online each day, the 20Q AI is learning on a broader level than it was in 1988 when it lived on a floppy disk that Mr. Burgener swapped amongst friends to help it learn. After the AI moved to the internet and more people started playing, its level of learning increased, as well as the connections it may make when guessing. 20Q played its 44,000,000th game in September of 2006. Mr. Burgener notes that the success rate of the online 20Q AI is 73 to 78 per cent. According to Mr. Burgener, the "real" success rate is higher, but he has "dumbed down" the AI in order to make game-play more interesting. If 20Q won every game, all the time, as it is capable of doing, no one would come back to play.
[edit] Electronic Toys
The first handheld version of the game was released in 2004. 20Q.net Inc. licensed a subset of the knowledgebase to Radica Games Ltd. The Radica 20Q knowledgebases are smaller due to the very small size of the microchip. The responses on the original handheld game were limited to Yes, No, Unknown, and Sometimes. The device, however, is very complicated for its type. It contains a small portion of the original 20Q website knowledgebase, and does not learn from responses gathered. The toy has garnered various toy awards (Oppenheim, T.I.A., Canadian Toy Testing Council) from around the world.
Unlike the online versions of the game, the electronic toys do not learn. The adaptable nature of the A.I. lead to an animated version of 20Q, titled The Sith Sense, also available on the Internet. The Sith Sense version was licensed by 20Q.net Inc. to Burger King Corporation, who used the AI to represent Darth Vader, who claims to be able to read the player's mind. The "Sithsense" campaign was awarded a Gold Cyber Lions Award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in 2006.
[edit] Trivia
The first question asked has the options "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral". This is taken from the Major-General's Song, a piece from the Gilbert and Sullivan opera The Pirates of Penzance. "I am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical"
The Oxford Guide to Word Games, by Tony Augarde, Chapter 23 "Twenty Questions," page 197, notes:
"The game has sometimes been called Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral or Yes and No. The latter was the name used in Dickens’s Christmas Carol: It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter, and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out: ‘I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!’ ‘What is it?’ cried Fred. ‘It’s your Uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!’"
