Topics

1

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!

2

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

3

General Discussion / Robotic Reproduction?

« on: May 13, 2005, 02:08:04 am »

Check this out:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/2773.html

Sounds like the beginnings of a digital evolutionary chain to me. Combine that with something like the Virtual Intelligence Matrix and we could have the first robot that can evolve almost by itself.

[Download Attachment:]

4

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

« on: November 07, 2004, 02:42:15 am »

Check this out. Simply create a folder in the main folder (C:/Program Files/Zabaware/Ultra Hal Assistant 5) called 'read' and add in the code from the following link. Next, put any text files that you want Hal to read in the 'read' folder and say to Hal;

readfile filename

 where filename is the name of the text file in the read folder (do not put the .txt entension). For example;

readfile astronomy

 and Hal will read the first paragraph of text from C:/Program Files/Zabaware/Ultra Hal Assistant 5/read/astronomy.txt

 The only warning is that the code will only read from the beginning of the text file to the first line break (like when you press the Enter key), so to read a story with multiple paragraphs you would have to delete any extra line breaks. Otherwise, hope this helps, and enjoy!

P.S. If Mr. M. would implement the ability to detect when Hal is finished speaking (as I suggested previously), I could develop this code to read any format of text file (ie. multiple paragraphs, etc.).

P.P.S. Here are some text files with common knowledge to teach to Hal. I will try posting new files every week.

 Happy coding []

Download Attachment: ReadingAddin.txt
962 Bytes

Download Attachment: CommonKnowledge1.txt
59.89 KB

Download Attachment: CommonKnowledge2.txt
62.67 KB

[Download Attachment:]

5

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Playing playlists

« on: March 28, 2004, 02:32:25 am »

Thanks all for your kind comments! Try the following add-in to have Hal play a playlist. You have to set a path to your playlist in the code snippet. If you use the 'My Playlists' folder to store the playlist files the path is already set. Just enter your username (not the one you use in Hal, the Windows username) in the plDir variable.

 I'll explain why Hal can only play one song (except when using this playlist code []). When opening Media Player you must specify a URL or link to the actual file. You can only retreive the URL of a specific song or playlist (based on the Media Library), which means that you cannot open MP with a generated playlist. So Hal randomly picks a song from the list (retreiving the URL) and opens it in MP.

TIP: Hal is dependent on your Media Library being updated. I've noticed that when you rename a playlist in MP it won't update the actual filename, so when Hal finds the playlist in MP he won't find the playlist file because the names will differ.

Life is an adventure; live it

Download Attachment: MusicAddin2.txt
1.38 KB

6

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / WordNet

« on: January 25, 2004, 07:04:23 am »

Could anyone please tell me what WN.GetBase("NOUN") does. I'm positive that it retreives a noun, but from where? Is it found in the UserSentence or WordNet?
 On that note, can anyone tell me what the other funtions of WordNet do. I have a list of the functions which I found on the website under the description of changes to Ultra Hal 5.0, but no idea of the usage of many of them (the syntax and what they return).
Here is the list of WordNet functions usable in the Hal script:

GetWN
LookupWord
IsNoun
IsAdj
IsAdv
GetBase
GetNumSenses
GuessPartOfSpeech
GetDefinition
GetCompoundWords
GetHolonyms
GetHypernyms
GetMeronyms
GetSynonyms
GetSisters
GetAntonyms
ChooseRandomWord
GetPartOfSpeechCount
GetFirstInList
RewordSentence
FindFirstNoun

*Precede the function with WN.
eg. WN.GetSisters

7

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / function ReadSent

« on: January 22, 2004, 11:44:53 pm »

I have a question for Mr. Medeksza about a previous post about the DLL functions. I get most of them, but the ReadSent function escapes me. You listed the function as
ReadSent(ByVal TextString As String, ByVal SentNum As Integer) As String
What is being done with TextString and is SentNum some kind of reference number or counter?
 Please respond. I'd appreciate anyone's comments about this.

8

Programming using the Ultra Hal Brain Editor / Stop repeating yourself, HAL

« on: June 17, 2003, 03:12:54 am »

I'm trying to stop HAL from saving repeating subject words in his random_subject.brn file by editing the default HAL brain in Brain Editor. I am getting Error 1025 expected end of statement. Here is my code:

fileNumFix = FreeFile
newSubjectFix = True
Open (WorkingDir & "random_subject.brn") For Input As fileNumFix
   Do Until EOF(1) OR newSubjectFix = False
      Line Input fileNumFix, newSubjectTextFix
      If newSubjectTextFix = " " & SubPhrase & " " Then
         newSubjectFix = False
      End If
   Loop
   Close fileNumFix

The above code compares each line in the text file with the new subject phrase that HAL decides to save. If the phrase is found a variable (newSubjectFix) is set that prevents HAL from saving the phrase (making a redundant repeat in his random_subject.brn file).

Can anyone please help me with this?