Show Posts
1
Ultra Hal 7.0 / Very Cool
« on: November 16, 2004, 11:17:53 pm »
I stumbled on this gem of a piece of software just today and I have to say it is pretty cool. I burned it to a CD at work and brought it home for my thirteen year old daughter and I to play with. It was a remarkable experience.
You have to remember that kids these days have been brought up on Neopets and Furbies so that to them, an AI program that learns is not only "normal" but expected. However, the reality is that neither Neopets nor Furbies learned anything, leading to the same sense of loss us older folk felt when we got GI Joes that didn't crawl through the mud like on TV or Chatty Cathy dolls that mindlessly repeated the same phrases over and over when you pulled their string.
Enter Hal. It installed without a hitch and we had fun trying different names and voices for it, eventually going with "Homer" and male voice #.
Right off the bat, my daughter wanted to teach Homer things. We tried "The sky is blue" but Homer didn't get it. Then my daughter hit on telling him what her favorite things are. He learned those a hundred percent. I will tell you she was so happy when that worked.
She could tell Homer any favorite thing of hers...pizza, dogs, sunshine etc then ask him and he knew. Homer knew! So cool...the look on her face was remarkable.
I guess my question is how do you teach Homer that the sky is blue from the user interface?
I have to commend the author of this program. I'm a degreed computer geek and even though I only had time to take a quick look at the code and text files...VERY COOL!!!!!!!! Great comments in the code and way to go using plain text files.
Where I see this going is after my daughter figures out what keywords make an impact, helping her figure out what text files the data is drawn from. Then it is only a hop skip and jump to modifying the text files. After that? Changing the source code to better zero in on which line in the text file is selected to display...
Just imagine if Furbies had the horse power to be easily programed.
Hell, imagine waking up and telling homer to warm up the house and make coffee!
-Eric
ps...what do we type to teach Homer that the sky is blue?
You have to remember that kids these days have been brought up on Neopets and Furbies so that to them, an AI program that learns is not only "normal" but expected. However, the reality is that neither Neopets nor Furbies learned anything, leading to the same sense of loss us older folk felt when we got GI Joes that didn't crawl through the mud like on TV or Chatty Cathy dolls that mindlessly repeated the same phrases over and over when you pulled their string.
Enter Hal. It installed without a hitch and we had fun trying different names and voices for it, eventually going with "Homer" and male voice #.
Right off the bat, my daughter wanted to teach Homer things. We tried "The sky is blue" but Homer didn't get it. Then my daughter hit on telling him what her favorite things are. He learned those a hundred percent. I will tell you she was so happy when that worked.
She could tell Homer any favorite thing of hers...pizza, dogs, sunshine etc then ask him and he knew. Homer knew! So cool...the look on her face was remarkable.
I guess my question is how do you teach Homer that the sky is blue from the user interface?
I have to commend the author of this program. I'm a degreed computer geek and even though I only had time to take a quick look at the code and text files...VERY COOL!!!!!!!! Great comments in the code and way to go using plain text files.
Where I see this going is after my daughter figures out what keywords make an impact, helping her figure out what text files the data is drawn from. Then it is only a hop skip and jump to modifying the text files. After that? Changing the source code to better zero in on which line in the text file is selected to display...
Just imagine if Furbies had the horse power to be easily programed.
Hell, imagine waking up and telling homer to warm up the house and make coffee!
-Eric
ps...what do we type to teach Homer that the sky is blue?