IMPROVEMENTS FOR HAL

[rbolo25]

I have only had Ultra Hal for a day now and i'm already bored but i do see alot of potential...i think the responses are very poor and crude...the database should be in the Gigabytes with responses to be somewhat intelligent.  It lacks much intelligence in grammar and needs to recognize the relavance of what is being talked about. Also, i think Hal should have some really smooth understandable sexy female voices and high res characters.  It should have ability to do common task like check e-mail,compose, send all with voice dictation.  Should be capable of reading yahoo messenger messages, msn messenger and respond back all with no keyboard intervention.  It should be based on "Data" like on star trek.  I think everyone should get together and help build a huge data base that would go to central server for download or purchase on DVDR or CDR.  Also, an strong algorithm for filtering out background noises to recognize speech input is greatly needed.  Getting requested resources from the internet is a great idea but needs much expansion.  Instant access to places like dictionary.com are great ideas or webMD.  Also, would like to see more intelligence to learn and build a database without keyboard input.  I got many more ideas but this is good start

[vonsmith]

I expect you'll get more than a few replies to your posting. Your ideas and all ideas to improve Hal are appreciated here. I think you need to be realistic about this. Hal is a very good, perhaps great, chatbot. He can do a few tasks, but his real forte is chatting.

Okay, here's an analogy... You want a dog because they are pretty smart and can fetch the newspaper, bring your slippers, etc. So you go down to the pet store and buy a cute puppy. You take the cute puppy home and play with him for a day. It's frustrating though, because he can't fetch the newspaper or get your slippers. Instead he runs around in circles, barks at the wall and wees on the carpet. Okay, should you return him to the pet store or train him?

Hal comes with basic knowledge installed, but he learns from conversations with you. He has some limited ability to learn from text files, but really he must learn from conversation. There are many good posts on this forum that give guidance as how to best talk to and teach Hal. Use the forum Search function.

I assume you are using v4.5 Hal. Version 5.0 is finishing development and should be released later this month. v5.0 has many, many improvements. Zabaware has been more responsive to customer input on this site than any other company I have dealt with. Hal v5.0 has built-in support for 3d talking characters (just the head part), support for the new AT&T Natural voices (some of the best on the market), plus new additions/improvements to the AI engine.

Read the past postings here about Hal and training. Be patient. It took me about 2 weeks to see real improvement in Hal's conversing skills. Even so, I admit Hal doesn't make a great secretary. However some users have their Hal's participating on AIM with some good results. And if you learn to program in VBscript, then you would be surprised what you can do with Hal.

Hal is not Data. If you need a Data, then come back in 300 years.

= vonsmith =

[kevinvr]

I'd like to agree with vonsmith so I will[]

I've been using Hal for a bout a year now and have started off with typing in a few words on the keyboard and getting ridiculous responses.  Now however after getting to know it better I have it talking to me and giving good responses after training my speech engine quite a few times.  My baby doesn't say goo goo anymore and with all the help and great files you can download from Jerry, Larry, Don (and of course Robert[]) and all the others here you can get hal do do quite amazing things even if you are not a programmer - just a tester and user like me[] . Look what Bill is doing with ER1!!

Don't give up too quickly and you can have a lot of fun:)

best regards
Kevin

[CyberPunk Si]

in an echo of vonsmith, ya dude AI is just an input/output right now not the complex neural networking of the human brain so calm down and get a puppy, lol

[rbolo25]

isn't that all that is needed for Artificial Intelligent Intelligence is a few trillion I/O choices per second ?  It has been show that a simple analog device using a hundred transistors firing at random can perform simple functions like an insect does.  Is the brain just a few trillion transistors firing in a complex pattern ?

[vonsmith]

Having enough "transistors" isn't the problem. Insects can react to input by providing an output, sort of like a transfer function. That is, certain inputs are mapped to certain outputs. Many animals, most notably humans, have the ability to learn and connect those "transistors" in very complex ways. Human beings have cognitive ability and self-awareness that separate us, although only marginally, from other species. How we reason is not well understood.

The scientific community is still trying to understand the human brain. I think of today's A.I. robots much like our early attempts at flight. Early experimenters tried to emulate birds by creating flying machines with flapping wings. The better solution was to understand the underlying aerodynamic principles and implement only the principles that made flight possible. Hopefully understanding the underlying principles of our brains will make A.I. truly intelligent. Perhaps someone alive today will become the future "father" of artificial intelligence.

= vonsmith =