My name, as you might of gathered, is Dante Ashton, though I'm more then happy with Dan, Dante, or Dr. Ashton (Don't ask, that's my pseudonym for spam companies, I find it rather lovely I get snail-mail addressed to Doctor Dante Ashton...)


I am, as it so happens, an Artificial Intelligence Specialist. I've worked on many projects, most notably 'Jeeney AI' which won 2009's Chatterbox Challenge (Jeeney is a chat-bot)

My role is more of a technologist then a programmer or engineer, I come up with ideas and look at those of scientists and explain them to programmers and developers. I know how to code (a bit) and I know both AIML and LISP (though not the Common LISP used today). I'm generally the kind of person who can turn a research thesis into something useful to developers.

I started working with machines when I was 9 years old, by the age of 14, my computer could recognize me through a webcam and could hold a very good conversation. At the age of 16 I taught a far more powerful A.I. that could provide responses that were very human like....the problem was it took about five hours to do so. By that time, I gave up on my own projects and assisted others in theirs. Most welcomed me and accepted my ideas and suggestions and were very happy when they worked...they weren't too happy when they found out I was a kid, though :P


When I was 17, I did a soft migration to the world of Linux, my interest having been sparked by an article I wrote about KDE and the built-in AI tech (but which was eventally cut down) on what is now known as the AI Hub.
http://www.chatbothub.com/modules.php?n ... le&sid=351

From that point on, I threw away my other identities as a 30 something year old PhD researcher and have since been helping many projects (though, sadly, not many Linux projects, more desktop agnostic or web-based).


Along with my skills as a thinker, I am a bit of a graphics artist, and a writer (science fiction is my speciality) and my skills as a writer have shown me that the world of technology in books and the world of technology we have today are getting closer and closer to each other...


That's me, basically. I'm here to help as much as I can.