[ExI] ai class at stanford

[spike]

Haaaa!  This really IS about the AI class at Stanford.

So I have this textbook by Russell and Norvig.  Those of you who have it or
know the answer by whatever means, do feel free to jump on this:

Assume I have a chat group archive that goes back a bunch of years and I
have thousands of posts on some very specific topic.  The group has been
strictly moderated, so there isn't a lot of clutter there.  We see new
members come on regularly with the typical newbie questions, and someone
will patiently explain that there is a FAQ, but seldom do we get new guys
who have already read it.  Similarly, surprisingly few new posters here have
read the Extropian Principles  http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm  but, back
to this other group.  What we need is a robo-FAQ for when new guys come
along and ask tired old questions.  I think it would be possible to make a
database that would answer the common questions on a chat site, perhaps by
matching word for word with previous posters' questions.  A robo-FAQ would
be cool!

Question please: does the Russell and Norvig book anywhere explain how to do
that?  I may try to invent my way through it, but if it has been invented
already, I would rather go that route.  I don't want to derive the FAQ, I
want to write the software to go through on its own a huge pile of text,
note when certain keywords seem to show up over and over, then look at what
people posted in response.  For instance, if a new guy's post has the terms
"oil", "filter", and "which" I want the software to look for other posts
which have that, and then give the same answer that was given before.

The more I think about this however, the more obvious the idea becomes.  A
robo-FAQ is an obvious thing to need or want, and it's a cool coding
project.  Therefore it must have been done a thousand times before now.  Has
anyone here seen a robo-FAQ?  Is the code public domain?

spike