I had a brief conversation with A.L.I.C.E. (mentioned in Milly's blog on 11/15). She seemed to be able to respond to common conversational sentences with ease (e.g., How old are you? Where do you live?) . She could even respond to some idiomatic sentences (e.g., What's going down?). As the questions became more specific, however, her ability to provide meaningful responses decreased. My guess is that A.L.I.C.E. "learned" English in much the same way that many of us learned a second language (mastery of easier, more common questions and answers).

I like the idea of using something like A.L.I.C.E. as an on-line mentor in the program management simulation. I'm wondering if our design could take a first chop at gathering the data (e.g., types of questions that students might ask) needed to create the underlying "intelligence."