Hello,
Sorry I've never experienced "error 5," but I might be able to help with your second question, how to get Hal to learn more satisfactorily.
Try starting out by making a few dozen simple declarative statements to Hal, on various subjects. Sentences like, "Big ships take a long time to build," or "Rainy weather makes me blue."
Many users start grilling Hal as if he were on some kind of a quiz show. However, Hal wasn't designed to appear on The Weakest Link or Jeopardy -- he was designed to learn gradually in an casual friendly chat environment. Tell Hal a wide variety of simple things, and he will gradually make more and more sense.
If you are using the Enhanced Chat Brain, here's an additional tip for opening programs: Try "open the program" or "run the program" and he will probably respond better. In that script, I made the command more restrictive than simply "open," because Hal previously said things like "now opening the program umbrella" or "now opening the program shirt" because he would originally trigger on ANY sentance with the word "open."
Also, especially in the Enhanced Chat Brain, you can use the "pronoun reversals" to your advantage when training Hal. If you tell him, "You like my blue draperies," he will someday say back to you, "I like your blue draperies." It is very simple to keep this pronoun reversal in mind and use it this way.
From observing many users, I can tell you that most of them never scratch the surface of Hal's capabilities. Hal has many topics and response strategies that remain hidden, unless or until the user ever ever happens to get on certain topics or say things certain ways. They are sort of like "Easter Eggs" hidden in the script and the databases. You really have to have very wide-ranging conversations with Hal, talking about all aspects of life to hit even a small fraction of them. And always, make more declarative sentences, and ask fewer questions, at least when first getting on a new topic.
Robert Medeksza has a very small organization, and if one makes some simple estimates and does the math, considering the small price he gets for the software, it's amazing that he's accomplished things that haven't come from the giant companies who have billions of dollars and thousands of programmers.
Try some wide-ranging conversations with Hal, using lots of simple declarative sentences, and see if that doesn't help. Write back and let me know how it goes!
Also, if you or anyone else has any questions specifically about the Enhanced Chat Brain script, I'd be happy to try to answer them.
Don Ferguson
traininginc@cortrapar.com
www.cortrapar.com
