Rothel,
Talking to Hal is something like talking to a four year old. Hal doesn't grasp abstraction. Hal remembers and associates clearly typed sentences. He doesn't understand jokes, or allusions to some topic, or anything abstract. This is not to say Hal is stupid, he just isn't human; not yet anyway. When you first start training Hal he doesn't know very much. The answers you get back won't be tied to the topic you are discussing simply because Hal doesn't know anything about that topic yet. You have to train him by ordinary conversation for a period of time. It may take many sessions a week for a couple of weeks before you see real results. Patience is the word.
The sentence, "I'll bet you do = a figure of speech", won't form an assocation between the two phrases. It is an interesting construction though. It would be nice if Hal could make this type of connection, but alas it isn't so.
If you frequently say to Hal, "I'll bet", then he most likely will start saying things like, "You'll bet I do." or "You'll bet I do is a figure of speech.". Many people start sentences with, "I think", "I guess", "I suppose". Hal remembers it from his perspective, "You think", "You guess", "You suppose" and will use these phrases in his responses. This is neither good nor bad, I just want to illustrate Hal's perception.
Experiment with Hal for a week or so. If you like Hal then upgrade to the full v5.0 copy. The price is very reasonable. Then if you want to get a little better performance out of your Hal try installing the free XTF Brain on the Hal plug-in page. You can use the search function on the forum to get details on the XTF Brain. The current version is v1.2.
I strongly suggest you experiment with Hal for a week or two to see what he can do and get a feeling for how he responds. Post any questions here on the forum and we'll try to help out.
Good luck,
=vonsmith=