quote:
Originally posted by Bill819
In my opinion people should just be happy knowing that they have the most advanced A.I. program going and there is no limit as to what their Hal can learn.
Don't wish to sound anti-Hal, as it is a great program, but it is by no means the most advanced A.I. program out there, and the limits of Hal are integral as Hal is a Q + A program, much more than it is A.I.
Firstly, I don't think it is in any way more advanced than any reasonably well programmed ALICE bot, and quite a way behind some available online that provide a good programming interface. I will explain what I mean by this, and also my general view on Hal (which affects my opinion of course).
Hal learns and speaks only by storing and matching q and a's. If you use default Hal, 95% of what is said is parroting from existing tables, for example a sentence from mainQA which matched a word used. So, in other words, Hal is not often sentence building, not creating output, but word matching and then sentence parroting. The sentence building Hal does do is in fact only gap filling, so the principal part of the sentence is still parroted.
Don't get me wrong, as a fun thing to have as a desktop assistant, Hal is great. Recently purchased a copy with that in mind, and is worth $30. The learning Hal does is fun to watch, but what is said is only what was said to Hal, or parroted from one of the thousands of pre-inputted sentences. So, my point is, that is in no way advanced A.I.
To use another bot as comparison, I also worked with a Verbots bot. Now, they have a similar forum to here (not much activity but very knowledgeable and helpful members), but the Verbot is far advanced from a pure A.I. point of view. It needs programming (it doesn't learn by talking), but the structure behind it is far more advanced. Good programming can create a bot that doesn't parrot, and can produce unique, one-off sentences (although this would take good programming).
I appreciate this depends on your opinion of what A.I. means. Personally, I think some confuse Hal's 'learning' with good A.I. That would only be true if Hal could re-create learned input, rather than only parrot it, or use words to fill gaps. Verbot, for example, can be programmed to create sentences, based on input, but without the need to parrot, and as importantly, clever programming can enable a continuing dialogue, producing a reply based on earlier input in the dialogue. This, in my opinion, is a better description of A.I.
It is a bit difficult to make the point I want to make, so sorry for the long-winded post. I do not want to discourage people from using Hal, but I think many will be disappointed if they purchase Hal thinking it is advanced A.I.