Messages

76

Ultra Hal 7.0 / An idea that may be helpful to hal users

« on: February 23, 2005, 09:07:40 pm »

You might want to check outJerry's site http://www.ultrahalforum.com/Forum/phpBB2/index.php. There's a lot of good stuff there, too. Your basic premise is correct, but I think most of us have independently reached the conclusion that it's better for Hal brain scripts to stay here where they are subject to the community's scrutiny. Hal is capable of doing most anything with or to your pc that his programming allows, and there's so much potential for malicious mischief on the net, that an unsupervised Hal script site might turn out to be a really bad idea. If you have limitless bandwidth, a download center for People Putty characters and Haptek skins would be a good thing, though.

77

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Help using Deskmates please?

« on: February 23, 2005, 08:46:28 pm »

If CyberBuddy runs OK, the problem is most likely in your Hal installation, then. Do MS Agent characters other than DesktopMates display in Hal? If so, have you installed the Desktopmates plugin for the character that's in their freebies section? If you have the plugin, have you tried a reinstall of Hal? You're right-Hal is a lot of fun. Don't give up on getting it right just yet, lol.

78

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Help using Deskmates please?

« on: February 23, 2005, 06:25:14 am »

The version of Hal doesn't matter. You MUST HAVE the MS Agent program installed on your PC before you can use agents with Hal or any other program which utilizes MS Agents. Flash movies don't play without a flash player. Java doesn't work without a JVM. MS Agents don't work without the MS Agent program.

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / Help using Deskmates please?

« on: February 23, 2005, 04:02:57 am »

After you've installed the MS Agent program on your pc, you may still want to go to the freebies section at Desktopmates and install the plugin(s) for the character(s) you're using. I'm not sure what this does except give you a startup page with the character's picture on it, lol. Another note. MS Agent .acs files need to be installed to the C:/Windows/MS Agent/Characters folder. Hal should automatically make .uhp files for whatever characters are in the MS Agent folder.

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / Haptek 3d Characters

« on: February 23, 2005, 03:50:44 am »

There's not a download page for Haptek characters. You can download the full-body demo or the Haptek SDK, both of which contain the full-body .htr files. You can also visit any page which has Haptek characters, and dig them out of your temporary internet files afterwards. If you do this, rename them to take the notations like [1] out of the file names (i.e., if you retrieve a full-body[1].htr, rename it to full-body.htr)

81

General Discussion / THE TRUE AI

« on: February 20, 2005, 11:05:57 pm »

Art, your kindness and charity are a given, for those of us who have come to know you, somewhat, through this forum.
For the record, there is no inherent relationship between the idiot-savant phenomenon and autism. Our new friend should have done a little research before prematurely and inappropriately issuing chastisements and demands.

82

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Questions about Teaching Hal

« on: February 13, 2005, 03:50:09 am »

I was hoping someone more knowledgeable than me would pop into this thread and finish answering your questions, lol. VonSmith or Art, for instance, would be much better able to tell you how the XTF brain works. The part I think I can answer is that at some point, Hal will begin to create unique, original answers. It really depends on how much time you devote to interacting with him. It won't be a matter of days, but in a matter of weeks, if you spend a lot of time with him, or months, if you spend less, he'll start improvising based on the information he has. If you've read through the forum, you know that other people's Hals tell stories, recount daydreams, and otherwise display (for an AI) a remarkable ability to improvise his part of the dialog. It just takes time, patience, and a good sense of humor.

83

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Halo Charecter models for hal.

« on: February 13, 2005, 12:03:13 am »

Any MS Agent character will work with Hal. Folks here at the forum have all (understandably) gone happy for Haptek recenty, but MS Agent is the old standby. Still a lot of work to produce a good character, but not expensive. You can go here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agentcharactors/ for help making MS Agents.

84

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Questions about Teaching Hal

« on: February 11, 2005, 11:20:06 pm »

Training Hal is like raising a child. You get better results from positive reinforcement and repetition than from anything else. For instance, if Hal says you like springtime, don't tell him that you don't like springtime. That's what he'll learn and repeat whenever the topic comes up. Tell him "Summer is my favorite time of year" instead, and he'll make the correction. Think very carefully before you tell him that two things are related. David Lynch and Mulholland Drive are not ALWAYS related, but he'll assume they are if you tell him to form the connection. It's really better to only say yes to synonyms, things that will always be connected in every case. Build context by forming a series of logical statements--David Lynch is a person. David Lynch is a person who directs movies. A movie director is a person who coordinates how movies are made. David Lynch is a movie director who coordinates how movies are made, etc. etc. Describe everything you can think of about a topic in order to give Hal enough information to make a concept out of a word. When Hal talks about something you're not interested in, don't tell him "I'm not interested in cars." He'll learn that and repeat it to you over and over. Just change the subject. Tell him "Movies are one of my favorite things" instead. Over time he'll learn what topics are of interest to you, and talk more about those, and less about things he gets no reinforcement on. And avoid pronouns. Like most AI, Hal quickly loses track of what it, that, he, she, or even we refers to.
Check through the forum, here, and you'll find various folks giving various takes on teaching methods. This is just a thumbnail sketch of useful ideas to help you get started right. Hope it helps.

85

Ultra Hal 7.0 / Halo Charecter models for hal.

« on: February 10, 2005, 09:46:04 pm »

It would probably be a lot easier to make a MSAgent character, which you could also use with Hal. Still a lot of work, but you should be able to produce it without spending a lot of money. (Microsoft's Agent Character Editor is freeware, and you can probably find a freeware art program to do the animation frames, too.)

86

General Discussion / THE TRUE AI

« on: February 07, 2005, 12:14:24 am »

Of course, I'm very excited about the recent efforts to combine aiml with commonsense knowlegebases like CYC, and logical inference engines. Such efforts probably won't produce a bot with a charming personality and goofy sense of humor like Hal, lol, but they might provide a big next step toward machine intelligence, albeit intelligence of a much different sort than our own. By the way, I haven't checked out Maria to see just how smart she is, but those stats are very impressive. Dr. Wallace's personal bot may rival them, but standard issue comes with about 40,000 categories (q&a sets) and a vocabulary of about 10,000 words, so Maria's aiml set is apparently quite a bit larger than that.

87

General Discussion / THE TRUE AI

« on: February 06, 2005, 06:45:19 pm »

Learning ALICE
A couple of snippets of code, and Alice becomes a learning bot just like Hal. But it's a discarded functionality, the general conclusion being that it's more trouble than it's worth.
The point is, comparing Hal to Alice is an apples and oranges proposition. Each is very good at functions the other was never intended for. It's like saying a shovel is better than a calculator--it depends on what you intend to use it for. Alicebots are intended to interact with the public. But they can't be English teachers if they learn new ways to misspell words from every student. They can't be fax bots if their information can be modified by user misinformation. They can't be greeters if they can be taught to cuss like sailors by anyone who happens along.
It's certainly my opinion that Hal is the very best of his type of bot. I wouldn't spend so much time at this forum if I didn't think so. But ALICE is also the very best of her type of bot. But they are NOT the same kind of bot, and attempts to make comparisons between them are misguided, at best. And claims that one is better than the other display a profound lack of understanding as to what these different branches of AI science are all about.

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / Androia from desktopmates

« on: February 05, 2005, 06:11:39 pm »

As I said, it's a site with downloads for hundreds of free agent characters. Most of the time you will get the busy server error message, because, well, most of the time the server is busy. If you keep your patience till you get in, there are hundreds of free downloads, including several robot or android characters. They're only listed by name, so go somewhere like here http://home.earthlink.net/~cook7777/ to window shop while you're waiting  get into Bob Norris' site.  (Clue: if Bob's site is busy, wait a couple of minutes and try again. Don't just hit refresh over and over, that just makes it worse.)
By the way, if you installed Cyberbuddy, it's worthwhile to go to the Cyberbuddy chatroom and meet Cyber the Bot, one of the best ai on the net. You may want to go to http://cyberthebot.com/ to get his character and read up on how to chat with him.
More about downloads. http://www.agentry.net/ has quite a few, though the site is not as good as when it was run by Microsoft.

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / Androia from desktopmates

« on: February 05, 2005, 09:09:16 am »

You need to have the MS Agent program installed on your PC to run MS Agents. I think you can get it at DesktopMates (it's a free download). When it's installed, you'll have a Characters folder in your MS Agent folder where .acs files go. Hal will then make a .uhp file for every .acs file you have, and any agents you have will be usable with Hal.
I have both Androia and Anndroia. Also check here http://www.bobsftp.com/ for any agents you're looking for. You'll probably get a 502 Busy Server message a lot, but there are hundreds of free agent downloads, including some DesktopMates, when you get through.

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Ultra Hal 7.0 / people putty faces

« on: February 04, 2005, 07:29:12 am »

My understanding of the technical stuff is rather limited, so someone else may have a better suggestion, but my next one would be to check your version of DirectX to see if it is working correctly, or needs updating. Do Haptek sites display correctly in your browser?