quote:
Originally posted by Bupp
...I Cant be positive but it reads like a random quote generator....
When you get right down to it, Hal is nothing but a weighted random quote generator. Even the advancements of some of the plugins are just ways to either refine the weight or expand the field from which random quotes are drawn. (notable exceptions seem to use a more reasoned method)
Given random chance, Hal is likely to say either "hello" or "how are you?". Several things may give him a slightly higher likelyhood of one or the other, but at some level, it's a dice toss.
Even if we set up situations where the weight is incontrovertably overwhelming, and the dice always come up "how are you", it's still a dice toss.
If we set up situations where a 10 billion sided die is used, and the weight values are calculated by years of accumulated data, it's still a dice toss.
At some point it will get so refined that we will not be able to distinguaish Hal from a human, but that says more about us than it does about Hal.