H-Bot Answers Historical Questions

If you're stilll into natural language searching, check out H-Bot at http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/h-bot/ . H-Bot answers historical questions, and while it's not always right, it was better than I thought it would be.

I always start messing with these things by asking odd questions. So I started with "Who did Aaron Burr shoot?" H-Bot confidently replied, "Pablo Picasso" and I almost sprayed tea all over the keyboard. Trying again, I asked, "Who shot Alexander Hamilton?" and H-Bot responded, "The lone gunman." I suppose that's technically correct... (strangely H-Bot knew the answer to "Who Was Aaron Burr?")

I decided to be a little nicer to H-Bot. It answered "When did WWI start?" "When was Einstein born?" "When was Bill Clinton Born?" and "When was Pearl Harbor?" all satisfactorily. H-Bot is limited at the moment in the kinds of questions it can answer; it prefers "When did" and "Who was" type questions. It's interesting to play with; hopefully it will expand.

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