Messages

1

General Discussion / Re: HAL Feedback & Reinforcement

« on: December 13, 2011, 01:32:47 am »

Thanks, all, for the feedback so far. First of all, I wouldn't get too worried as HAL would only be modifying parts of itself and not things outside. So your secret access codes and banking information should stay safe (I hope).

sybershot: I haven't seen TrinitySkit. I'll take a look.

Carl2: I'm not knocking the great job done by Zabaware. I'm just trying to develop a way of giving HAL some self-reflection capability outside of direct user interaction, like when you think to yourself how you could have done something better. HAL, being a computer application, would have stored all the necessary details to know which routines/plugins were used in each interaction, and using that info, would try to "better" it's own processing of user input in certain cases (ie. the scope of the plugin used).

The idea is to start with HAL making small changes, such as which relevance algorithm to use within a certain plugin or changing the order or logic checks based on the usage/success rate. An example I imagine would be HAL moving keyword matches up or down in order of precedence as they are used more or less frequently.

Thanks again for your comments! I hope to keep this going to help encourage me to start actually developing on this idea.

2

General Discussion / HAL Feedback & Reinforcement

« on: December 12, 2011, 02:34:32 am »

I haven't had much time to spend on programming directly, but I've been pondering on methods of making fundamental improvements to HAL's learning capabilities. One idea is inspired by the (not too recent) change in the the way HAL loads plugins via external files. This seems to me a great way to allow the introduction of a feedback-loop of sorts, whereby HAL makes changes to the plugin code based on further user interaction and self-analysis (ideally during idle periods). Sort of like the basis of building tools to make better tools, HAL would have an algorithm with dynamic metrics that would refine applicable plugins resulting in better, future analysis and refinement (supposedly). This is actually not as complex as it sounds to implement based on programming language, yet becomes severely difficult due to the natural dependencies on human language.

The main thoughts I'm concentrating on are what components HAL could potentially use this feedback process, further than storing more relevant questions/responses/topics. I used this approach in one test build I did on my own bot development project and I was able to help refine the bot's responses through a kind of teacher/student interaction. I actually got the idea from how Ai Research develops (some of) their bots by "teaching" children's books and correcting any "misunderstandings". While this method does improve 'conversational accuracy' it seems to me to have a few fundamental flaws in that you are not really "correcting" the bot so much as making it more similar to yourself by way of expression. This approach doesn't work so well once the content enters the realm of the debatable. After all, we all have our own opinions on what is right or wrong in most cases.

What do you all think? To me, a big part of learning is not just interpreting new information, but associating and correlating the existing information to find better ways of taking in the new information. Thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Happy coding!

3

General Discussion / Re: just my luck :(

« on: November 05, 2011, 07:30:58 pm »

That definitely does sound like a driver or hardware issue. If you continue to get the BSOD errors, you could grab the mini dump file Windows creates when it crashes like that and analyse it with a Microsoft utility. That will tell you exactly what the cause is.

This won't help you now since you know the Windows installation is not the issue, but you can repair Windows files by using this command:
sfc /scannow
This will replace the basic Windows files with the ones from your installation CD/DVD.

Good luck!

4

General Discussion / Re: another hal back up idea area

« on: October 20, 2011, 05:40:03 pm »

sybershot:

The slowness I was referring to was in transferring files into Skydrive or even just browsing via the mapped drive. Not sure what causes it to be so slow, but I think Microsoft limits speeds on WebDAV connections (the protocol used to access SkyDrive via the mapped drive method). I suspect they do this as they prefer use of their service via their website or other services (Windows Live Essentials).

For the credentials issue, if you're using Windows 7 you can find an option in the User Account settings to "Link online IDs" (MSM login) to your Windows login, thus eliminating the need to supply credentials when opening the mapped drive to your SkyDrive folder.


Happy coding!

5

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: how to input and get hal to interact with other programs

« on: October 19, 2011, 01:04:35 pm »

That's a tough question to answer. You could have Hal read your sensor data from a file and process as needed. As far as the integration with other applications, that depends on what you're trying to do.

6

General Discussion / Re: another hal back up idea area

« on: October 19, 2011, 12:57:09 pm »

You could map a folder from Skydrive right in Windows. Then you can just copy your files to that mapped drive.

One warning though. It can be very slow from what I've experienced.

Here's a quick tutorial on how to do that:
http://www.nirmaltv.com/2010/02/02/how-to-map-skydrive-as-network-drive-in-windows/


Happy coding!

7

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: Need help with plug in

« on: October 18, 2011, 12:14:07 am »

Wow. The General Knowledge plugin. That was the "common knowledge" I got from an MIT site which vonsmith packaged into what he referred to as "Hal gold". I can't believe I still remember that.
I can probably update the plugin to work with the current version of Hal soon enough if you're still interested in this plugin.

8

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: correct additional random hal hapswap command script needed

« on: October 17, 2011, 07:00:47 pm »

You could simply append a number to the end of the file name (ie. blowingnose1.ogg, blowingnose2.ogg, etc.), generate a random number in your script, and have Hal run that random file (making sure not to generate a larger number than you have files). There are many other ways, but that would be the simplest way I think.

Happy coding!

9

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: Plugin Tips and Tricks: for the New Member

« on: October 17, 2011, 06:54:04 pm »

Great info! It gave me a quick crash-course in the changes in Hal that I wasn't familiar with yet. Thanks!

10

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: need some help with a mediaOpener plug in

« on: October 17, 2011, 06:49:19 pm »

P.S. I quickly tried your code with .pdf and .doc files and it works fine (after I added the appropriate extension searching in the ReadFolder function). Maybe your issue lies with Windows and the default application it uses?

11

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Re: need some help with a mediaOpener plug in

« on: October 17, 2011, 06:27:09 pm »

Simple fix for the jpg and gif files. In your script, you forgot to capitalize "JPG" and "GIF" (ie. UCase(Right(File, 3)) = "jpg" should be UCase(Right(File, 3)) = "JPG").

For the issue with Hal responding, from what I see in the coding the loaded script is run but then the main Hal brain is continued from where the script was dynamically loaded (the "PLUGINAREA#" used). This would mean Hal will respond as usual to the commands being run in your script. When I used to make plugins for Hal (years ago now) I would have to test them by inserting the code directly into the main Hal brain. I actually like this new method of the PLUGINAREA# code insertion, but this still doesn't give control over the rest of the main brain. My first goal with getting back into development with Hal will be to re-write the brain code a bit to allow for some over-riding of the other brain functions when a custom script is performed.


Happy coding!

12

General Discussion / Re: Hello Again, HAL

« on: October 17, 2011, 11:40:27 am »

Thanks for the welcome, sybershot. Indeed that is the advantage of Siri over Hal, having the ability to interact with other applications as well as the user. I remember making some attempts at having Hal do things outside of it's own program (starting songs in Media Player, etc.). The goal was to have Hal be the actual "operator" of the computer with the user conversing with Hal to accomplish what they needed on the computer. Sort of like Siri, but much more than just a personal assistant. I remember a couple people on this forum went as far as integrating Hal into a car and a house. Cool stuff.

I'm glad to see Hal has been upgraded to use a database structure for the conversation data now. That was a much needed improvement. It'll take me a little while to familiarize myself with the coding again, but I hope to be able to make some useful features for Hal in the near future.

13

General Discussion / Re: Hal talking to Hal video

« on: October 17, 2011, 10:32:30 am »

Great video! Very funny!

"I love crayons. But you are not dressed."

14

General Discussion / Hello Again, HAL

« on: October 17, 2011, 10:22:51 am »

It has been a long time since I last played around with HAL. Too long. But I couldn't help but be reminded of HAL with the arrival of the Siri feature from Apple recently. I just had to come here and post something. I find it funny that myself and many other enthusiasts were here working on HAL years before Siri was even thought of. I think HAL would talk circles around Siri.

I'm not sure yet, but I think I would like to start developing additions for HAL again. I've been dabbling in AI development off and on over the last 5 years, and have even made a couple attempts at my own chatbot. But, good ole' HAL was always the baseline I would refer to. The main goal with my own bot development has been to give the bot the ability to determine the users' "train of thought" by not only identifying the topic and semantic meaning of the conversation, but to conceptualize the gist of users' follow-up responses to help keep on topic. I believe it's time I start applying some of these things to HAL again.

See you around, and happy coding!


HALImprover

15

Ultra Hal Assistant File Sharing Area / Scripts, addins, and extras

« on: May 30, 2005, 12:47:41 am »

quote:The next version of Hal will have reverse compatability with current brains and the current system of text based .brn files. The new default brain however will appear vastly different, but should be easy to pickup for current vbscript brain programmers. Script control will be given for Hal's appointment functions and program launcher. A lot of the complexity of the current script will be moved into the database and dll without sacrificing user control.

I got that from a post by Mr. M. on 1/28/2005:

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1809

Happy coding []