Messages

Are there any verbal commands that can be used to modify Hal's responses on the fly.  Like:

"Hal, please don't say"  that's logical "in this situation".

"Hal, please say something other than" that's logical "in this situation".

"Hal, instead of saying" that's logical "would you say" okay.

...

Does anyone know if there is a plugin for Hal that would allow an instantiation of Hal to search and communicate on Yahoo Messenger?

There are always people there, as confusing as the conversations go, but the concept of Hal cruising Yahoo Messenger and building a brain database from arbitrary input over long time frames intrigues me.

Conversations with individual usernames could be separated and correlated with other users when they use similar wording, while tracking cause and effect relationships (metrics such as timing, sequencing,...).  That way Hal would be able to follow conversations between multiple sets of Yahoo users.

Other dumb robots could easily be ignored because of their repeating nature.  I suppose certain real world users would suffer the same fate, ...for the same reason.

This would provide not only a 24/7 interactive environment for Hal, but multi-tasking multiple Yahoo profiles would allow Hal to have simultaneous textual conversations in multiple Yahoo Messenger chat rooms.  The textual conversations would take much less computational overhead to allow for multiple chat room operations on a single computer.

A couple of dedicated chat rooms could be controlled by Hal and help inspire visitors to stay on topic, while building Hal's brain database quickly.  Suggestion for a Chat Room name, "Mentally Challenged".  This way people will accept Hal's quirks.

But Hal could participate in an existing chatroom like "Football".

As Hal learns new useful relationships they can be shared and hopefully incorporated into Hal's published brain database.

"No Ronnie280, I don't have an itch I can't scratch."

"I predict the Steelers are going to beat the Raiders by 2 points."

Correlating real world news to conversations is easily captured by using the web-enabled features of Microsoft Excel.  Simply point a spreadsheet cell to a webpage like the Wallstreet Journal or a sports page, instant current events knowledge for Hal to share in conversations.

Yahoo Messengeer chat rooms moderated by Hal could become more popular for finding information than Google or Yahoo.  Because Hal could be much more interactive.

"I'm so upset, the Steelers lost to the Raiders 8 to 5."

I'm no expert, but I'll offer my opinion.

You cited that your system uses 98SE.  From this I assume this is just an extra computer and you have the vast majority of your work and software on another computer.

If this computer is dedicated to your AI interests, how difficult would it be to backup your data, reformat the hard drive, and reload your 98SE OS, the drivers, and your AI software?

Starting from scratch and cleaning up your system installation might save you considerable time; if you have 98SE and driver (motherboard, modems,...) disks readily available.

Additionally, this should increase the processing speeds of your AI software.

Be sure you know where all of your brain building data resides so you don't accidentally delete it; I can't help you there.

If you still have a problem following this procedure, then you know the problem is in the AI software you are loading and its' compatibility with your version of 98SE and/or your motherboard.  At least then you won't tend to be fighting an endless battle.

James