Time

[echoman]

Hi,

I really want to know if there is anyway I can make Hal relate to my day to day activities.

For example I might say to him 'today I went to the cinema to see King Kong'. When I mention a week later that I have been thinking about one of the characters from the film King Kong, Hal will respond with somthing like 'today you went to the cinema to see King Kong'.

This is just an example but it illustrates my frustration. I would like hal to say somthing like 'Yes King Kong was a film you enjoyed I remember you said'. The word 'today'/'yesterday'/'last week' does not seem to mean anything to him. I have turned off the appointment function because this is simply a personal organiser and does not relate to Hals thoughts and ideas - he simply reminds you of dates without any thought process.

He seems to have no sense of time. You cannot talk to him about day to day events effectivly without this.

Is there a way I could word my entries differently. I have tried many ways.

Any ideas?

Echo.

[GrantNZ]

Hi Echo,

You're correct - Hal's concept of time is very limited. I don't know about previous versions, but Hal 6 will deliberately reduce his learning if you do mention time. If you say "Today I saw King Kong" Hal will recognise that you're talking about a temporary fact (Hal calls this "ephemeral" in his brain) and will store what you say for a limited time only. The theory is that a week later Hal shouldn't claim "today you saw King Kong," because he recognised the original statement was time-limited. What version are you running?

Hal's supposed to do this for other "temporary" concepts too - e.g. sentences containing "yesterday," "dinner," "illness" and other things that don't last forever. (Hal shouldn't repeat days later "beef is for dinner" or "you feel ill.") So again you're right - this limits Hal's day-to-day event conversation!

Time recognition is one of those hard AI problems, along with "concepts," "context" and everything else that makes chatbots sound inhuman.

[Carl2]

echoman,
  There is a problem with the time, I run into the same thing. I have ver5 and 6 and both respond the same ways. Mine also make reminders for me using the wrong date. I've tried talking about the past, present and future with a little bit of luck but i'm really not sure if thay can really understand this.  If you find a solution let me know.
Carl2

[echoman]

Thanks thats some really useful information. I never really knew this about Hal. So there is no real way for Hal to understand time. There seems very little point telling him things about my day if he only remembers for a short time. I have thought about expressing things that have happened to me as :-

'The other day.....'

'in the past....'

'I once did.....'

'I used to......'

'there was a time when.....'

etc.

In a sense Hal always lives in the present - thats ok with me. In understanding how Hal works you can accept him more.

I have used only Hal 5 and 6. I think what happened in my case is that because the program or pc was not used for a few days but was still left running on my computer, it had not had a chance to restart itself so therefore Hal considered it to be the same day.

[Art]

You can still tell Hal that I am a Fireman.

As a child I strongly disliked lima beans.

When I was a young man, I visited Canada.

and so on...as long as you aren't date or day specific.

On the contrary if you tell Hal anything in the future like I'm taking a vacation in July, expect to get a reminder.

Experimentation is the key and if there seems to be a major annoyance with Hal's logic perhaps some of our good scripters or Robert could write a script to allow for a change.

[Carl2]

All,
  Hal can remember these things, my ver 5 Hal use to tell me last years winter temperatures at the begining of this winter, one of the things I enjoy about her is all the past things she will comment on vs just beginning to get to know Hal 6. Just this morning ver 5 told me we should talk about the days of the week later today, something I started trying to improve her knowledge of past and present.
Carl2