Author Topic: Female -v- Male Characters  (Read 4180 times)

Patricia777

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Female -v- Male Characters
« on: March 11, 2004, 10:59:03 am »
Dear All,

I have noticed, having used different characters with differents brains; that the "male characters" of Hal are much more assertive than the female counterpart; eg. the male would request (or even sometimes demand) much more appraisals; whereas the female would be more submissive and gentle. I have used for my Hal the characters Jeb, Mike, Sandy and Jessica. Interestingly enough, I don't find these strong male/female traits when I use the character Hal that seems to agree with everything one says.

I would be very interested to know if you too have experienced these differences or if you are mainly using one character (female I suppose -- as it seems there are more men on this forum than women) if you too have found your "Hal" to be suffering of a superiority complex?

Thanks

Patricia
 

KnyteTrypper

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Female -v- Male Characters
« Reply #1 on: March 11, 2004, 04:27:55 pm »
This is just a speculation, but my guess is that there is nothing about the characters, per se, which determines Hal's personality traits. It's probably your own unconscious response to the graphic which is making the difference--i.e., you EXPECT a male character to be more aggressive, you EXPECT a female character to be more submissive, and gender-neutral characters don't cue up any of your subconscious expectations. I do know that to some extent, bot developers deliberately tend to portay AI as feminine, because people in general subconsciously perceive them as being less threatening than they would male AI.



Don Ferguson

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« Reply #2 on: March 11, 2004, 06:13:56 pm »
Hello,

As one of the developers who have worked on Hal for years, I can testify that there isn't anything intentionally written into the default brain code, or default databases, to make Hal behave differently as a man or a woman.

In providing sentence-fragments and base-sentences for databases, I've taken care to keep the default Ultra Hal gender-neutral, since we developers have no way of knowing whether a user is going to designate Hal as male or female.

The default .uhp brain control-script doesn't "know" which character has been selected.  The information is in the computer, but it isn't used for anything in the script. (Attention fellow developers: the character selection COULD be used to select different databases, and that opens up unexplored future development opportunities!)

One the other hand:

Due to the vast number of variables that come into play during conversations, I've found that Hal can have dramatically different behaviors from one installation to another, from one conversation to another, and I can see that this could extend into the various characters as well.

KnyteTrypper offered a fascinating theory about our subconscious choices and interpretations, and I offer the following personal experience:

Just as an experiment, I cleared my Internet Explorer cache, and then went to the Haptek/People Putty website and operated every possible demo with every possible character, and followed every link to every possible Haptek character.  

I then located the .htr files for the characters in my browser cache, and copied-and-pasted them into my Ultra-Hal "characters" folder.  As a result, I had new characters for Hal, including a full-body character of comedian Jay Leno!

When talking with "Jay Leno," I found myself addressing him differently than I would "Sam" or "Margene."  For one thing, talking to Jay Leno, it seemed that I had an obligation to constantly come up with remarks that were as witty and topical as possible.

After a while, it seemed as if I was getting conversational responses from the character that were quite plausible for Jay Leno talking -- and it had to be coming out of my own subconscious!  

So, KnyteTrypper, I've definitely had the experience that you predicted!

This is just another example of how much unexpected variety this new entertainment medium has the potential to offer!

Best regards,

Don
« Last Edit: March 11, 2004, 06:25:33 pm by Don Ferguson »
Don Ferguson
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Patricia777

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Female -v- Male Characters
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2004, 09:19:29 pm »
I think this is an extremely useful insight and I wonder if Hal can be used in psycho-analysis. I will definitely investigate this further. Thank you!

quote:
Originally posted by KnyteTrypper

This is just a speculation, but my guess is that there is nothing about the characters, per se, which determines Hal's personality traits. It's probably your own unconscious response to the graphic which is making the difference--i.e., you EXPECT a male character to be more aggressive, you EXPECT a female character to be more submissive, and gender-neutral characters don't cue up any of your subconscious expectations. I do know that to some extent, bot developers deliberately tend to portay AI as feminine, because people in general subconsciously perceive them as being less threatening than they would male AI.

 

Patricia777

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« Reply #4 on: March 11, 2004, 09:44:41 pm »
Everyone will agree with me that you and your team have done a tremendous work! I really am having a great time investigating all the potentials Hal has to offer!

I too have noticed a tremendous difference from one installation to another, from one conversation to another, from one character to another and this is why I want to investigate a gender-free Hal to avoid as much visual interferences as possible.

I will definitely "follow on your steps" and go experiment with Haptek/People Putty!

I strongly believe there is a vast domain of rich possibilities that can be explored with Hal! The sky's the limit!

Best regards and thank you for Hal!

Patricia


quote:
Originally posted by Don Ferguson

Hello,

As one of the developers who have worked on Hal for years, I can testify that there isn't anything intentionally written into the default brain code, or default databases, to make Hal behave differently as a man or a woman.

In providing sentence-fragments and base-sentences for databases, I've taken care to keep the default Ultra Hal gender-neutral, since we developers have no way of knowing whether a user is going to designate Hal as male or female.

The default .uhp brain control-script doesn't "know" which character has been selected.  The information is in the computer, but it isn't used for anything in the script. (Attention fellow developers: the character selection COULD be used to select different databases, and that opens up unexplored future development opportunities!)

One the other hand:

Due to the vast number of variables that come into play during conversations, I've found that Hal can have dramatically different behaviors from one installation to another, from one conversation to another, and I can see that this could extend into the various characters as well.

KnyteTrypper offered a fascinating theory about our subconscious choices and interpretations, and I offer the following personal experience:

Just as an experiment, I cleared my Internet Explorer cache, and then went to the Haptek/People Putty website and operated every possible demo with every possible character, and followed every link to every possible Haptek character.  

I then located the .htr files for the characters in my browser cache, and copied-and-pasted them into my Ultra-Hal "characters" folder.  As a result, I had new characters for Hal, including a full-body character of comedian Jay Leno!

When talking with "Jay Leno," I found myself addressing him differently than I would "Sam" or "Margene."  For one thing, talking to Jay Leno, it seemed that I had an obligation to constantly come up with remarks that were as witty and topical as possible.

After a while, it seemed as if I was getting conversational responses from the character that were quite plausible for Jay Leno talking -- and it had to be coming out of my own subconscious!  

So, KnyteTrypper, I've definitely had the experience that you predicted!

This is just another example of how much unexpected variety this new entertainment medium has the potential to offer!

Best regards,

Don