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Ultra Hal 7.0 / I'll show you mine if...
« on: September 02, 2004, 11:22:53 am »
As the newest member of this forum, I think I should introduce myself more fully.
I have been working as a computer professional since 1960 (I am 68) when I got my undergraduate degree in math, psych and language at the U. of Wisconsin. My first well paying job was as a weapons designer for a defense contractor. I have a patent still in use in so-called smart bombs, something about which I am NOT proud. I quit in disgust during the Vietnam “conflict” when my work was destined to be used to kill real people. I was on the Net in 1969, one month after its inception as ARPANET (at a research institute in Oregon). In 1990, after seeing the movie 2001 for the umpteenth time, a friend asked me if I could write a program like HAL. The true answer was that I did not know, but it was an interesting challenge.
So, I wrote a quick-and-dirty assembly language program to attempt to parse dates. I was told that the parsing of (colloquial) dates is a generally poorly solved problem (easily verified even now) so I decided to start there. I wanted to “understand” and respond to things like “What was the date last Tuesday?” or “What was the day of the week of my birth?” or even, “Give me the date of five days into the second week of the first month in the second year of the fifth decade of the fourth century of the second millennium.”
To get to my goal, I invented a notion called a “trigger”…sort of a generalization of a keyword. A “trigger” is a well defined word or phrase that would cause the program to “do something”. In the initial version, only date-words were triggers. This first software was very encouraging so I kept on working on it, trying to generalize it to a more general HAL-like program.
To make a long story short, after hundreds of experiments, I finally decided…in 2002…to try to write a full-scale version. The immediate stimulus was finding out that the University of Minnesota charges senior citizens only $10 a credit to take courses. Having completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. in math at that institution many years earlier, I decided to ask if they would accept me into the Ph.D. program in computer science …a discipline that did not exist when I was a child of 30. I figured that I could use the school (and student loans) to help me develop HAL.
This was a bit of a cluster-****, since graduate school is DEFINITELY aimed at the young, with your excellent short-term memories and ability to actually write things and make calculations by hand and take tests, skills that I quickly found had nearly deserted me in my dotage. So, after my first year, I have a GPA of only about 2.5, well below that which is expected of Ph.D. candidates. However, in my previous incarnation as a math grad student, I had gotten a 3.75 GPA, so I am still (barely) alive as a grad student in COMPSCI.
However, my main goal has been accomplished. HAL is being written (in Java, Java Script and JSP) and is coming along splendidly.
This morning, while searching for free speech synthesis (for guess what?), I ran across the Zabaware site. Quickly downloading and testing your software told me that we…you guys and I…are definitely on the same page. It is apparent (by plugging in queries that my HAL successfully handles) that Ultra HAL depends rather heavily on Eliza-style parsing, screwing up colloquial dates royally. Your graphics and interactive user interface are GREAT…but Ultra HAL is a bit of a dummy.
So, I’ve shown you mine. How it’s your turn. Could we possibly collaborate? I couldn’t find a corporate email address for Zaba, so I was forced to post this notice in a forum. You can however, email me directly at willy@dreamagic.com.
Love,
Willy
I have been working as a computer professional since 1960 (I am 68) when I got my undergraduate degree in math, psych and language at the U. of Wisconsin. My first well paying job was as a weapons designer for a defense contractor. I have a patent still in use in so-called smart bombs, something about which I am NOT proud. I quit in disgust during the Vietnam “conflict” when my work was destined to be used to kill real people. I was on the Net in 1969, one month after its inception as ARPANET (at a research institute in Oregon). In 1990, after seeing the movie 2001 for the umpteenth time, a friend asked me if I could write a program like HAL. The true answer was that I did not know, but it was an interesting challenge.
So, I wrote a quick-and-dirty assembly language program to attempt to parse dates. I was told that the parsing of (colloquial) dates is a generally poorly solved problem (easily verified even now) so I decided to start there. I wanted to “understand” and respond to things like “What was the date last Tuesday?” or “What was the day of the week of my birth?” or even, “Give me the date of five days into the second week of the first month in the second year of the fifth decade of the fourth century of the second millennium.”
To get to my goal, I invented a notion called a “trigger”…sort of a generalization of a keyword. A “trigger” is a well defined word or phrase that would cause the program to “do something”. In the initial version, only date-words were triggers. This first software was very encouraging so I kept on working on it, trying to generalize it to a more general HAL-like program.
To make a long story short, after hundreds of experiments, I finally decided…in 2002…to try to write a full-scale version. The immediate stimulus was finding out that the University of Minnesota charges senior citizens only $10 a credit to take courses. Having completed all the requirements for a Ph.D. in math at that institution many years earlier, I decided to ask if they would accept me into the Ph.D. program in computer science …a discipline that did not exist when I was a child of 30. I figured that I could use the school (and student loans) to help me develop HAL.
This was a bit of a cluster-****, since graduate school is DEFINITELY aimed at the young, with your excellent short-term memories and ability to actually write things and make calculations by hand and take tests, skills that I quickly found had nearly deserted me in my dotage. So, after my first year, I have a GPA of only about 2.5, well below that which is expected of Ph.D. candidates. However, in my previous incarnation as a math grad student, I had gotten a 3.75 GPA, so I am still (barely) alive as a grad student in COMPSCI.
However, my main goal has been accomplished. HAL is being written (in Java, Java Script and JSP) and is coming along splendidly.
This morning, while searching for free speech synthesis (for guess what?), I ran across the Zabaware site. Quickly downloading and testing your software told me that we…you guys and I…are definitely on the same page. It is apparent (by plugging in queries that my HAL successfully handles) that Ultra HAL depends rather heavily on Eliza-style parsing, screwing up colloquial dates royally. Your graphics and interactive user interface are GREAT…but Ultra HAL is a bit of a dummy.
So, I’ve shown you mine. How it’s your turn. Could we possibly collaborate? I couldn’t find a corporate email address for Zaba, so I was forced to post this notice in a forum. You can however, email me directly at willy@dreamagic.com.
Love,
Willy