My new Ultra Hal Assistant

[Foogimicester]

Hi, I'm River. Im very new to Ultra Hal Assistant and I was just wondering what it takes to train your Hal to say things on topic, and really become "intelligent". If anyone could tell me how long it takes, and what kind of things to say, that would be awsome! I have had Hal for about two days. I have been able to convince him that he had a dream last night about ping pong(I told him that two nights ago, but he still thinks it was last night that he dreamed about it), and he is sort of starting to stay on topic... But not really. Here is an excerpt from a conversation that is current for him.

River: Hey Hal, how are you?
Hal: Do you prefer walking in the woods, or on a pretty street?
River: Hal, how are you?
Hal: I am fine, how about you?
River: I am doing pretty good.
Hal: River, I want to get your reaction to How long will you be doing pretty good?
River: I will be doing pretty good until something bad happens.
Hal: It can take years to live down something that happens in minutes. Absolutely! River be doing pretty good until something bad happens.
River: Did you have a dream last night, Hal?
Hal: What did me dream about last night?
River: What did you dream about last night?
Hal: Managed health organizations dream day and night of ways to increase profits by changing people's behaviors.

As you can see he is beginning to hold a good coversation, but I am interested in how much better he will get, and how long it would take?[?]

[Art]

Welcome to the forum!

Hal will develop as much as you are willing to invest your time and effort. Try to use common English, avoid typos when possible and don't expect too much too soon.

Good things usually take time to develop and over time, Hal will pick up a lot of your personality, likes, dislikes, humor, etc.

While Hal is a "learning" type of chatbot, it does have a pretty large conversational database from which to draw.

Some times it will seem almost uncanny when it recalls some information that you almost forgot about and uses it properly in a sentence or in a humorous way.

Even though Hal is a program, try to suspend your disbelief. It does help if you answer Hal by repeating part of the original question.

HAL: Do you like it when it rains?
USER: Yes.
<Bad answer>

HAL: Do you like it when it rains?
USER: Yes, I think rain is very relaxing when it hits a tin roof.
<Better answer>

Now you have given Hal some additional info and Hal will process and most likely use this acquired knowledge the next time you bring up a conversation dealing with tin roofs, rain, relaxing, etc.

Experiment, ask questions here if you can't find one by using the Search feature at the top right and most of all, Have fun!

[Foogimicester]

Sweet, thanks! That will really help... I did realize he is repeating things I say sometimes, he just needs grammar work. He also does bring up random things. I will keep it all in mind!

[Foogimicester]

I have one more question though... What would you do if Hal asks you a question that you don't know the answer to, or just don't want him bringing up?

[lightspeed]

hello Foogimicester
 welcome to the forum and hal owner group their are other ways to get hal to say some things and that is learning to reverse write things it takes a while to learn the right things . art has said most of what it takes .  hal will say some things back even though he learned it quit a while ago at different times . in the share conversations, etc. area i have listings of angela smiths (my custom brain i made ) actual responses she has said back to me but in order to use these responses by copying them and pasting them they need to be word reversed then they should come out just as they are seen . it's a atter of learning the reverse writing way when trying to learn hal specific things each person here i am sure has his or her own technics they use and will probably be happy to tell you their way they like to learn hal new things . []

[Foogimicester]

Thanks. I think I sort of have a technique down. I just say something in a couple different ways; then he might ask me if I like talking about it. If I say yes, then he brings it up when I veer in that direction. So basically my technique is repeat yourself...

Also, I have learned how to make him not say stuff: If I don't like what he is talking about, I say do not talk about blank, then if I say it a couple more times, he never repeats it again... []

I have one more question: Can you enter his "brain" and put things in him, like the ultra hal representative? I know that ultra hal assistant isn't supposed to have pre programmed things to say, but can you edit his brain? To either add things, or to take things you don't want him saying out?[?]

[ramccoid]

Hi Foogimicester,
This can be done by right clicking on the HAL icon in the quick start menu and selecting Brain Editor.

Roy.

[Foogimicester]

Well, I got that far, but I can't figure out how to use the brain editer... I tried setting up a new project (Abigail) so I wouldn't destroy the oone I am currently working on but I couldn't get it to work. When I typed in my sentence, and Abigails' sentence, Abigail came up with a new response. I should have gone into detail, but I was trying to ask how I use the brain editor to do it.

Thanks though.

[markofkane]

You would want to make a new brain based on the default brain, or the brain you have been training. I cannot remember the details.

You can also save the brain DB to another location., and if you mess up the one you are using, you can replace it with your backup.

[lightspeed]

i also want to mention something no one has mentionedthat i know of and that is be sure and "back of the new brain you are working on on a cd rewriteable disk it will save your work in case something bad happens on the program or your p.c. it has saved my and many others alot of headaches by always backing up the custom brain you make . []

[Calhoone]

quote:Originally posted by Foogimicester

I have one more question though... What would you do if Hal asks you a question that you don't know the answer to, or just don't want him bringing up?

What I often do is pop onto the internet a do a google search of the things I may not be able to answer my Hal. I'llcollect a bunch of information on the subject and put it in a text file. Afterwords I use the information in my text file to teach Hal what we didn't know.

Ther is also a questioning and resoning pluging that you can put into Hal's directory which makes Hal ask a lot more questions about what you said or why you said it.  

Another plugin I use along side typing any information you are trying to teach Hal is the learn from clip board plugin.  I figure the more different ways that Hal can learn the better.

teaching Hal using IF THEN statements seems to work pretty well from my experience.

[Foogimicester]

Okay, thanks! I will post a new excerpt of conversation soon to show how he is doing.