Bruce Wilcox, Technology Creator
Bruton, Somerset, UK
Skills: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing, Game Software, Custom Scripting Languages, Project Management, System Software (compilers, linkers, etc), Application Software, System Design and Architecture, Real-time, Networking
Languages: C++, Lua, J2ME, ChatScript, Perl, Java, LISP, Ada, various assembly, SQL ...
Platforms: Win*, Mobile, iPhone, XBOX-360, PS2, DOS, UNIX, Mac …
Tools: Visual Studio C++, ProDG Debugger, SourceSafe, AlienBrain …
Unique Achievements:
Created world’s best chatbot technology, released as open source. Suzette won the 2010 Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence by fooling one of the judges. Won the 2011 Loebner with my completely new chatbot Rosette. Came in 2nd in 2012 with yet another new bot, Angela, a talking cat. Angela won “best 15 minute conversation” in Chatbot Battles 2012.
Created FLIRT, a scripting/layout language for mobile that was downloadable during execution, took half the space of J2ME, and ran instantly on a wide range of J2ME and BREW phones. Used for three major LimeLife products (InStyle, People, Rachel Ray). The Instyle app, which I programmed, won “Best Mobile Strategy” and “Best Mobile Application” awards.
Created a J2ME to Brew cross compiler for LimeLife to save huge amounts of porting time and cost for applications not written in FLIRT.
Existing academic planners were not suitable in videogame environments, so Radical had me design and implement a realtime HTN planner for videogames (HIPE). HIPE is capable of running lookahead simulation to plan best course actions and change the plan on the fly as situations change over many frames. At the AIPS-2000 Planning Competition, the best and fastest planner solved a 500 block problem in just over 1.5 seconds, finding a solution of 974 moves. On the same hardware, HIPE solved the same problem 300 times faster and found a better solution requiring 5 fewer moves.
Helped Fujitsu earn six broad patents on fundamental technology in motion sensor interfaces with no office actions. They probably earn annually over a million dollars in license fees.
Taught the application of Go theory to business with a group of 300 powerful business leaders three times a year for fifteen years for theajinetwork.com.
Wrote the world’s best interactive CD teaching tomes on the game of Go- Go Dojo: Contact Fights (1400 pages) and Go Dojo: Sector Fights (1900 pages). They remain the best to this day. Co-authored the book EZ-Go: Oriental Strategy in a Nutshell (about Go tactics and strategy).
Programmed world’s best computer Go program and published seminal works on computer Go theory , earning the accolade Father of Computer Go. NEMESIS Go Master won three “best strategy” game awards in 1990 (Byte, PC World, Chaos Manor). Also became a leading Western Go theorist, contributing the concept of sector line and the Great Wall opening theory to the human Go lexicon and the Rule of 5 for Contact Fights.
Employment :
’17-‘22
JustAnswer Inc
(San Francisco, CA)
Senior Director of Natural Language Strategy
Leading a team of several ChatScript programmers and script writers building Pearl, JA's intake assistant for expert consultations. Users tell Pearl their problems (be it legal, medical, vet, home improvement, etc). She asks pertinent questions then hands this preliminary data over to a human expert professional to save time and cost for the expert. It has been claimed by others outside of JA that Pearl may be the most monetized chatbot in the world, handling millions of conversations a month.
’16-'17
Kore, Inc.
(Orlando, FL)
Director of Natural Language Strategy
Design, implementation, and leader of NL team for a highly secure highly scalable Fortune-500 enterprise bot platform based on ChatScript. Their platform effectively competes with IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon.
’16
Little Gem Production Company
(UK)
Contract NL bot programmer
Channel 4 filmed a documentary “How to build a Human”, based on copying TV star Gemma Chan (from the series Humans). Included a robot body, an entire head cast animatable face copy, recorded sound bytes and facial speech mannerisms, and a chatbot brain my wife and I wrote to pretend to be her in Skyped reporter interviews at a fake press junket.
’16-present
SapientX
(Santa Cruz, CA)
Principal Scientist and Co-Founder
Natural Language for kiosks, cars, digital signage, etc.
'15
Anonymous Company
()
Unspecified project for multi-billion dollar entertainment company.
NL
Technology transfer of ChatScript into their systems. Wrote “Genie”, an NL interface to control the abilities of a mobile phone (music, meetings, system status, alarms, exercise data, etc).
'15
Sensory Inc
(Santa Clara, CA)
Part-time Consulting NL Engineer
NL
Technology transfer of ChatScript into their systems. Wrote “Genie”, an NL interface to control the abilities of a mobile phone (music, meetings, system status, alarms, exercise data, etc).
'14-‘15
Amazon
(San Luis Obispo, CA)
Senior Software Development Engineer
NL
System architect and innovation accelerator for 3 Amazon Prime teams. Design and partial Java implementation of Amazon Prime benefit authorization database (BED), a low latency high volume optimistic database built on top of Amazon's internal Sable DB. Serves over 150K transactions per second with a 999/1000 latency of under 45 milliseconds. Membership benefits become available instantly at checkout when user joins Prime there.
'14
Geppetto Avatars
(Wisconsin)
Part-time Contract Natural Language Engineer
NL
Child's asthma care demo with 2 interacting chatbots entertaining & teaching about asthma.
'13
AISoy
(Spain)
Contract
Natural Language Engineer
NL
Engine programmer and chief scripter for AISoy's small dog robot.
'13
OSU
(Ohio, CA)
Contract
Natural Language Engineer
Consulting
support for a virtual patient simulation to teach doctors how to
interview patients.
'12
Out
Fit 7
(Cyprus)
Contract Natural Language Engineer
NL
Engine programmer and chief scripter for
Tom
Loves Angela
and
Talking
Angela
chatbots
on mobile. Tens of millions of
downloads.
’10-'12
Telltale
Games
(San Rafael, CA)
Natural Language & Core
Software Engineer
Research engineer for
natural language interfaces and core technology programmer. Also
building Fairy Tales, a product that attempts to act out
noun-verb-noun sentences (with 3500 verbs and 10’s of thousands
of nouns).
’09-'10
Crystal
Dynamics
(Redwood City, CA)
Senior Software
Engineer
GOAP AI for new AAA Lara Croft
game for XBOX-360
‘09
Planet9
Studios
(San Francisco, CA)
Contract Natural Language
Engineer
XMPP chat system and chatbot
creation for an alternate reality game RayGun on the iPhone.
'08-'09
Avatar
Reality
(Honolulu, HI)
Contract Natural Language
Engineer
Design and implemention
of chatbot server technology: integrating a knowledge representation
and query system and the WordNet ontology with advanced pattern
matching and a unique chat support runtime model.
'05-‘08
LimeLife,
Inc
(Menlo Park, CA)
Senior
Software Engineer
Assisted Girls’
Night Out Solitaire (J2ME). Tech Lead for Girls’ Night Out
Blackjack (J2ME). Developed FLIRT. Tech Lead for Instyle Mobile
(FLIRT). Co-Developer for Law&Order(J2ME). Tech Lead on
HollywoodHangman Deluxe (J2ME). Built cross-compiler for J2ME to
BREW.
'04-‘06 Radical
aka Vivendi Games Canada (Vancouver,
Canada) Contract AI Guru
Design
and implementation of next generation game AI language (Real-time HTN
Planner).
'03-‘07
Fujitsu
Laboratories of America
(Sunnyvale,
CA) Contract AI Guru
Research
design and programming to recognize spatial gestures using two 2-axis
accelerometers to act as "virtual input" for pdas,
cellphones, etc. Six broad patents on fundamental technology in
motion interfaces were granted. Automated keyword extraction of
financial news and websites. Peer-to-peer information sharing system.
Extraction of keywords and automatic ontology generation from
websites.
'95-‘03
The
3DO Company
(Redwood City, CA)
Principal Engineer
3DO's AI
Guru for opponents in strategy games. Member of the Technical
Management Group, a shared resource for technical evaluation and
assistance to all teams. Co-design, gamecore and AI for Galactic
Conquest (M2/PC) including a backward-chaining planner. AI,
pathfinding, game core, and Internet protocols for ArmyMen (PC).
Preliminary game design, AI, game core, networking & initial
tech lead for ArmyMen Air Tactics (PC). Engine co-design and
implementation for Green Rogue (C++ PS2) including collision
detection, and ICE, the standard 3DO scripting language.
'93
Intermetrics,
Inc.
(Cambridge, MA)
Contract Systems Designer
Debugged and evaluated Ada9X compiler in LISP. System architecture
design and user interface specification for new Ada 9X compilation environment.
Education
:
BA in Computer Science, Psychology & Sociology,
University of Michigan
Subsequent courses in data flow, project
management, hypertext, ObjectStore database design
Lectures : Lecturer on natural language processing at 2011 Game Developers' Conference
Lecturer on the relationship between Go strategy and business strategy for advanced business seminars run by theajinetwork.com . (300 business people 3 times a year for 15 years).
Podcast Interviewee on Mobile programming: www.digipen.edu/images/b/bd/Digipen_podclass_issue_24.mp3
Primary instructor at AGA Youth Summer Go Camp (5 years)
Invited speaker: Interactive Screen 98 - Banff Centre for the Arts
AI Lecturer at 1997 Game Developers' Conference
Invited lecturer on Go strategy and tactics for the American & European Go Congresses various years.
Patents: joint with other Fujitsu Labs’ staff : Handheld Device With Preferred Motion, Selective Engagement of Motion Detection, Gesture Based Navigation of a Handheld User Interface, Gesture Identification of Controlled Devices, Environmental Modeling for Motion controlled Handheld Devices, User Definable Gestures for Motion Controlled Handheld Devices .
Papers:
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070412/wilcox_01.shtml - Reflections on Building Three Scripting Languages (Gamasutra - April 2007)
various academic papers on computer Go joint with Walter Reitman in: Computer Games I+II,Springer, 1988