HAL Conversation Initiative

[onthecuttingedge2005]

How can we give HAL the ability to take the initiative in a conversation, HAL is only programmed to speak when spoken to, I would like the option to make HAL Start a conversation and speak on a (timed) initiative if a speaker becomes idle,
For an example: The User and Hal are conversing and after a while the User runs out of things to talk about so the conversation becomes idle, When the conversation becomes idle HAL will have a timer in his program that triggers something like: Hello? You still there, Or, Did you fall off your chair? or something to re-trigger a conversation like real Humans do.
Best of wishes.
Jerry.

Edited by - onthecuttingedge2005 on 01/12/2003  04:21:29

[brianstorm]

Now yer thinking OTCE, this exact thing is
on my top ten list too. I can see how to go about
building it and have saved your post as your description
of it how can be done is right on. I figure we
can make a copy of a 4.5 brain and put it in at the
beginning of the script so
to enable it you would just select that brain.
  I am gonna try and make one. If it works I'll post it here.

CatAtomic

[brianstorm]

ProgressReport-

What I would do is have Medekza build this feature into the front end of Hal, possibly as part of Hal 5.0 .Seriously tho, the way Hal responds is with the function GetResponse. You have to give the program a sentence to process, then the script processes the sentence and passes GetResponse back to the 'front end' (my word). I have one thing that hasn't been fully explored yet and that is to see if the script can give multiple GetResponses at the end of the script with a variable time delay at the end. After the initial Response, the other ones are like you sed in your post...

While doing various experiments, I had a profound revelation- what AI really needs is a dynamic program (ie. one in motion), as opposed to a static program (like Hal works now).not two Hals talking together, but two parts that make a whole that are always exchanging, processing  and abstracting input into sense. Could call them  Hemispheres... *Hint for 5.0  B)
 
     -I got the matches  >B)

CatAtomic

[Larry]

Might be interesting to see 2 Hals conversing... Of course, it would be nicer if one was female and the other male... maybe with different personalities too...
I wonder too, can you have 2 Hals running - maybe a copy in a different folder???

[brianstorm]

Progress Report 2nd:

A while back someone on the forum was talking about macro's so I happened upon and D/L'ed a freeware macro program to check it out. It came with little instruction and I've been looking at it and trying to decipher how to run it. From what I can tell, it should be entirely possible to make a macro that is a shell for the Ultrahal program. I also think it could be done ubiquitously, that is you wouldn't know that Hal was being run from this shell program. There is a timer in there OTCE, and you could accomplish what you want with the program that way.
-  I'll explain how it could be done:

Left click on Hal icon in the tray would activate macro, which is a notepad. The macro has a timer going (or gets LastResponseTime and does a countdown to respond). When you type something to Hal, the notepad is catching it. When you push enter, that activates a macro that cuts and pastes the UserSentence into the Hal Engine. Hal produces GetResponse. (a macro gets the new LastResponseTime)

That is just the tip of the flame from my match though! Hal has been given the power to open programs.. -That could activate macros!  
 
the name of that program is called Quick Macros. It can probably facilitate doing most everything I see come up as suggestions in this forum. And much more

CatAtomic