Copyright 1998 Jason Hutchens. Macintosh version by Paul Baxter, Doug Turner, and Nick Zitzmann.
MegaHAL is a program that simulates talking to a psychotic artificial intelligence. It differs a bit from "traditional" conversation simulations, such as the classic Eliza, by using the Markov model to hold a conversation. MegaHAL can learn from what you type, it can learn to speak in other languages, and it can use MacinTalk Text-to-Speech to speak back to you (even in Mac OS X)!
MegaHAL was originally programmed by Jason Hutchens for the 1998 Loebner AI Contest, where it came in second place. MegaHAL is now distributed under the GNU Public License and has a SourceForge page. Paul Baxter and Doug Turner worked on the original Macintosh port. I (Nick) made a few changes to Carbonize MegaHAL and get additional brain support to work correctly on the Mac.
Here's a few sample conversations with MegaHAL:
User: Huh?
MegaHAL: Obviously you'll never be accused of having a good day to teach megahal some tricks.
User: You are always a constant source of entertainment.
MegaHAL: Infinite code loops are always a constant source of entertainment.
User: i was wondering if you could answer that question
MegaHAL: I was wondering if you could leave your brain at the centre of the alimentary canal is the answer!
User: Oh shut up!
MegaHAL: Oh you are so silly. Bob dole should thwap you with his campaign speech.
This version of MegaHAL was compiled with Mac OS X in mind, but it will also run under Mac System 8.1 or greater. Source code is included.
Download MegaHAL (Comcast)