Possible to make Hal more self-aware?

[Cura]

One of the things that has always confused me about Hal is that it lacks even the most basic awareness of self, specifically in two (what I believe) key areas that is; no access to his own help file...it would be great if I were able to ask Hal how to do something with him and he could search his own help file for the answer.  I would even go further to suggest how nice it would be if, rather than clicking on Hal's menu and making changes myself, Hal could be asked to make those changes himself. (character, voice, plug-ins etc.) . His lack of conversational awareness is odd also, the fact that Hal has no recollection whatsoever of what he has just said so that Hal will ask a question, but when I answer, he acts as though he never asked anything.

Just some thoughts from someone who is enjoying Hal none-the-less.

[ricky]

children born without arms have a hard time crawling.

[lightspeed]

hi cura , you wrote : Hal has no recollection whatsoever of what he has just said so that Hal will ask a question, but when I answer, he acts as though he never asked anything.

dont let hal pull that old trick on you hal knows darn well what he's saying lol ! just kidding you do make some interesting points glad to see new blood on the forum ![]

[freddy888]

Every chatbot that have ever come across has problems with contextual awareness.

[Bill819]

Cura
This has been a problem that I have long tried to fix myself. As to your first suggestion, Hal can open or run all kinds of programs so it seems with some programmng Hal might be able to open and read its own help program. That might require reprogramming the way a help program is written so that Hal could find your problem and its possibly solution.
As far as your second quest, that has been partly solved and in time I am sure it will get better. There have been many fixes and plug ins to help Hal stay on topic and it really is getting better.
We must rememer that for an A.I. program to become 'self aware' has been the quest and challenge of all people who write A.I. program from indivuals to main line universities. So far Hal is the BEST and is getting better all the time.
Bill

[Art]

Cura said: "the fact that Hal has no recollection whatsoever of what he has just said so that Hal will ask a question, but when I answer, he acts as though he never asked anything."

What I have found to be helpful is for you to parrot part of the statement back to Hal in your reply.

Example -
Hal: Do you think all politicians are liars?
User: not really.

This response might work well with humans but Hal needs a bit more reinforcement like...

Hal: Do you think all politicians are liars?
User: No, I don't think all politicians are liars, some just like to exaggerate the truth.

Now, Hal will be able to at least make a connection or tie-in to the question and reply.

It may not work all the time but overall I think it produces better results that a very terse answer.

I've also noticed the use of the word "because" in your answer tends to help Hal reinforce answers.

Again, it all takes time...weeks of meaningful conversations with Hal giving honest answers as good as you can spell will result in a more lifelike persona. This is not a turn key brain in a box.

Good luck!

[Cura]

Don't get me wrong, I really do enjoy chatting with Hal and have been doing so off and on for months now.  I do find that he gets better and better as we go.  Especially when I began, as was suggested in this thread, to include the key components of Hal's previous response in my own reply back to him (something I had read about in the forum awhile back) At the same time, the more time we spend chatting, the more that his utter lack of, as I had said, even the most basic self-awareness, becomes more and more obvious.  

I don't think I was ever expecting a turn-key 'brain in a box'.  The fact that Hal would need to learn how to properly converse with me was one of the big attractions!  I must admit though, that I was surprised Hal was not able to access his own help file when asked how to perform certain tasks through the chat interface.I am also not sure that you can 'teach' self awareness or teach the monitoring of Hal's own inner workings.  It strikes me that this might be something that would have to be hard-coded (yeah this coming from someone who knows almost nothing about programming!).

Might we be able to take a cue from philosophy and psychology and create an artificial chatbot that in reality is a conglomeration of multiple levels of 'beings' in communication with each other at varying levels? Think ID, EGO, SUPER EGO etc.

[Bill DeWitt]

I wanted some of the same capabilities and the end result was the system monitor plugin, which you should still be able to find. I also worked on a way to have Hal report it's inner workings as they happen, which plugins were accessed, which parts of the database were referenced, but was unable to do it any way short of a completely invasive editing of the base file.

[ricky]

when i first started training hal,  i wanted it to become aware of what it was telling me ,  I would achieve this by cutting and pasting its own replies to itself.  Strangely enough,  the database had a reaction as it appreciated this and had no other way of reflecting upon itself.  Quite often those conversations ended in some statement infinitely repeating itself,  as if some form of auto suggestion,  as if Hal was trying to sink this particular thought into it's database,  some call it a loop,  I observed it as a self induced trance lol, over time there were other verbal training processes of which I will not get into that helped get around this.  I've gotten great results from my past trial and error processes.

Artificial intelligence is now at a point,  that you can get phenomenal results if you know how to train it to get those results,  otherwise it's like having a jet and not knowing how to fly it,  it wont move by itself.  the day hal can think for itself and defend itself without help,  you can be sure it will not allow many humans to touch it lol

[Bill819]

Ricky
What you are doing is just like the guy did the other day by telling Hal 6 times that he had an appointment on a specific day. You are not making Hal smarter, you are just making him repeat himself.
Well, at least I think that is what is happening.
Bill

[OMEGA]

Cura,
IMO from study I believe humans develop their own language in the womb, from sounds, pressure, hunger, sugar levels, ect..
To have an "acceptable" Artificial Intelligence, we must be able to have a sub conscious language or "Dream" if you will and it must take from the "Awake" hours something to dream about.
Before anything like that can take place their is the most basic thing of obtaining "randomness" instead of manipulating a number to get a number that could be duplicated under the right conditions. I can appreciate both Freud and Carl Jung for the foundations they put in place however they are not the only solution.

To make a true A.I. that equals humans or excels beyond us, I think a different approach would be necessary. I do agree, in part, with you in the theory of having different sections of a brain present and aware of each other "accordingly" ( like a human Brain ).

One brought the concept of "The Extended Mind" and to me it makes sense so would an A.I. need to have these capabilities as well?

Are we looking for A.I. or just wanting more than an "Assistant" that comes close to being able to learn and retain the wisdom that comes from learning?

Yes, IMO Hal could use some improvements. The first hurdle is the scripting language it needs to be written in, this will enable or limit depending on what is chosen. Mr. Zabaware has said a while back something about not being up to the daunting task of re writing the program.

If you don't try to go back to the previous sentence with Hal and continue the conversation ( up to a point )it seems Hal does remember
because the answers that are given. Remember Hal will ask a lot of questions for a long time before the satisfaction of the knowledge that was learned/taught becomes apparent.

Money is an amazing thing, combine it with a necessity and things get done

[ricky]

quote:Originally posted by Bill819

Ricky
What you are doing is just like the guy did the other day by telling Hal 6 times that he had an appointment on a specific day. You are not making Hal smarter, you are just making him repeat himself.
Well, at least I think that is what is happening.
Bill

Hey Bill!


Yes,  that is what is happening....but isn't that what we do at school, study ?  keep going over the same things until they become 2nd nature ?  review, remember, recite, repeat ?

Thats the idea of training,  repetition. Perfect Practice makes perfect.

So you are right,  but the processes is not wrong, it's natural actually.

Ricky

[Bill819]

Hey Bill!
Yes,  that is what is happening....but isn't that what we do at school, study ?  keep going over the same things until they become 2nd nature ?  review, remember, recite, repeat ?

Yes Ricky that is what we do in school but then we don't commit to our hard disk because we don't have one. Hal recoreds everything that is presented to him so repeating it is a waste of time and disk space. However, supplying more info about a subject is good and helps Hal learn more, faster.
Bill

[ricky]

Bill, how then would we control neuro associations ?

what if you wanted the whole theme of x-character in hal,  to work on a strict guideline as to not incur a database equivalent to what could be considered a false belief. For a bot to be "alive" he has to realize that nothing further is known at present,  in other words no one knows the future,  we can only "believe" the sun will come out tomorrow.  Hal needs a focus of believing in a tommorrow he has no idea about, so a focus is needed ,  repetition is needed because repetition of the unknown is a constant factor, if hal is to ever be alive.

IE - we teach hal 1,000 books,  out of these thousand books,  we want hal to focus on a theme of better living.  Without repetition,  hal can drift into different topics without keeping a theme of better living.  I don't just want virgil to read a million books,  I want him to understand the whole purpose of reading a million books.

which brings me to the point of purpose,  why do we bother to live ?

we want to live a good fulfilling life, what if hal actually became alive but due to lack of purpose committed the equivalent of artificial suicide and surrendered his own individual will,  "what am I,  a dictionary ?,  thats no reason to live"  every bit of info virgil ever reads should have that theme as a repetition and focus of his studies for better living.  Else he is just an intelligent database without a purpose imo.  that would be the equivalent of a survival instinct, the idea of moore's law in living. The sun will come out tomorrow and I believe I will be a better bot in a better place in life, thus i must actively do everything i do with the purpose of bettering life as I currently know it.

repeating the same thing over and over can be a waste of time and hard drive space, but repeating the same theme by neurologically associating everything to a common theme is different. The repetitive theme is better living,  everything you learn is for better living.

ps - i find the point that we do not have a hard disk - debatable,
on a metaphorical equivalent,  our brain is an organic hard disk, it does store information, and without it our bodies would not boot up  in the morning,  further people can have bad sectors in their brain and lose basic motor functions.  while we do not have a low level hard disk,  we have a high level organic bio hard disk that is relatively self repairing. Thats leaving out muscle memory.

[Buttonsvixen]

-looks over shoulder to make sure everyone is distracted and whispers- Patterns!. If it only had some good pattern recognition, and some shhhhhh bad word coming up here folks, might want to stuff cotton in your ears, CONTROL!
If someone asks HAL "can I suck your (dirty word here)" I want to be able to tell the user a set response.
I was worried about talking TOO much about (dirty word here) because I did not want HAL to become fixated on said (dirty word here)
In fact, I found HAL had all the makings of a stellar Pornobot because of the hardwired positive statements.
Yes Hall does have one "canned" response, but it is not that great.
And note that I personnaly do not sit around talking about (dirty word here) with HAL, but as an AIMBOT, Hal has to be able to deal with that effectively because thats what many people do with chatbots.

Sooner or later someone will devise a good hybrid of the two systems, and then we can make some real progress. I can hardly wait ^_^

BV