Pseudo Chatbot Update

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There’s been an update to the pseudo-chatbot feature in the Jerx app. In the settings, you can enter whatever name you want to use for that chatbot.

There are two benefits to this.

  1. Now you can come up with a name that is completely ungoogleable, should anyone decide to try and look into it further.

  2. You can use a name that goes along with whatever story you want to spin about this supposed chatbot that exists on the dark web that you have access too.

You don’t have to make it jokey. You could name the program DeckSorterH6 and do ShuffleBored and place the phone on top of the deck and write, “What is the orientation of the cards in the deck?” Then it will shoot out its response as if it’s somehow reading the cards in the deck.

If you use your own deck, you can claim they’re special cards that the program can “read” via RFID chips, or something.

To me that’s a bit too on the believable side of technology.

So I will probably do something simpler with a borrowed deck. I’ll name the program CardFinderTX4 or something. Borrow a deck and do some type of Automatic Placement trick where the spectator seemingly mixes and loses a chosen card in the deck. Then the phone is placed on top of the deck and they type in, “Where is my card?” and it spits out:

Your card is located at the 37th position in the deck.

Or whatever the case may be.

This will be a good impromptu piece for when I can use someone’s deck at their place. With the right method, there will be no explanation.

It also allows me to play dumb. It’s the bot that’s doing it. Not me. I wish I knew how it worked.

I just need to find a good Automatic Placement trick. If you have a favorite I should check out, let me know.

I might use it as a reveal for the Trick that Fooled Einstein. Again, I would make it seem like somehow the program is “reading” the number of matches in our hand (or whatever) by waving the phone over our closed fists.

This also provides a little justification for why the revelation is so strangely worded. It’s AI. Who knows why it says things the way it does?

Of course, the app can be used to reveal anything that’s forced. It’s just a matter of finding the right trick to use it with. I would save it for a trick that would otherwise be a dull prediction. One of those tricks that you like, but you just don’t have a particularly good premise for. In that case, the AI premise will add an element of interest to it. But if your trick already has some interesting or charming aspect to it, then it would probably be a step backwards to use this particular reveal.

(Thanks, as always, to Marc Kerstein for his continued updates and maintenance on the Jerx app.)