Knight2000,
This kind of goes back to my previous posting...What do you want your Hal to be?
1). A reasonable assistant providing help with emails, messages, appointments, reminders, etc.
2). A 'Watson' work-alike that contains a huge deal of knowledge about a variety of subject matter.
3). A specialist that is knowledgeable in one particular area (auto mechanics, medical, legal, woodworking, home building, etc.).
4). A skilled conversationalist able to chat on a wide variety of subjects and the ability to remain on topic for a decent period of time.
I'm sure there are other examples and while Hal might be able to do a lot of these things, it doesn't particularly excel in any one of them.
That is part of the attraction to Hal in that it can me somewhat modified for whatever purpose suits the user.
Do we expect people we talk with to know everything? Well, some may think they do, but our answer is, certainly not. I don't think we should expect this of people yet we seem to expect this behavior of our chatbot. Instead of just casually chatting, we expect them to have all the answers to all our questions. Foolish us.
Stuff to ponder... Thoughts?