Conversational Starters

[Antec]

Hello all! As a new user of Hal, I was greatly
impressed by hal's ability to formulate seemingly intelligent
responses from natural language requests. It seemed that the computer had a personality of its own, until I noticed one thing that was lacking.
The fact that Hal never speaks unless spoken to makes him seem less
human. I'm sure we all would agree that this would certainly cause him to seem more like a real thinking entity. As I have no experience in programming in VBS script, I would love to see if anyone would be up to the challenge of writing script that could accomplish this. If hal would just say something after a set or random amount of time passage between user sends, it would be an improvement.

[Larry]

Yeah, I can't figure that one out... perhaps ver. 5 will deal with it...

[NT Canuck]

quote:Originally posted by Larry

Yeah, I can't figure that one out... perhaps ver. 5 will deal with it...

You can toy with this critter until V 5.0 shows up,
I found it some time ago, supports msagents, timed
responses and speech. Needs work but very entertaining.
http://www.answerpad.s5.com/

And there is the AIBuddy project, for kicks...
http://aibuddy.sourceforge.net/

--
'Seek and ye shall find'
NT Canuck
http://ntcanuck.com     BIND-PE & DNS
http://ntcanuck.com/tq/  Tips & Tweaks

[Morkeleb]

Hello,

Answer pad is ok but not as powerfull nor does it have as many options as Hal does. To make hal speak randomly would be not to ahrd if you know vb script. I think it would just take a timing loop that waits a random amount of time to keep it unexpected. The loop would wait the time chosen and then choose a random response to the last focus topic and then start again. this way it would make more random and unepected and more human like. If anyone figures this out please let me know. I am not to well versed in the vb script.

[Larry]

Well the problem is, the script is sitting at the enter key - waiting for the user to input something. If you've ever done any programing at all, you'll know what I'm talking about... this is something that will have to be done in HalAssit.exe - now we're not talking VB script anymore... and you couldn't do that to the AIM bots... but if you did, you could setup 'buddies' and 'start' conversations with them when they came online...

[brianstorm]

-Exactly, the one thing I keep thinking about tho is the appointment book that is
hardwired into Hal. Too bad the format is so tight with it- you can't even use a
Replace method to insert a conversational starter in the place of a custom event.
If one could just get Hal to set an appointment one minute into the future...
Ahh, I tried

CatAtomic >B)

[brianstorm]

-----------------------

Degrees of Consciousness

The lowest level of consciousness is the ability of an organism to monitor
it's body and environment. By this definition, even a lowly thermostat
has some 'consciousness' since it monitors the surrounding temperature.
Computers that perform self-diagnostics and that print (error) messages
also fall into this CatAgory...

-excert from
'Visions-how science will revolutionize the 21st century'
by Dr.Michio Kaku

---------------------

hopefully we can hash it out during the 5.0 beta!  Hope so!
Aye Medeksza, give us Consciousness

CatAtomic

[onthecuttingedge2005]

could we get hal to push the enter key either by Hot+Keys and or by an .INI file and or appointment book or even all the above or maybe there's a VBScript that can push the enter key or maybe use a Macro program linked with Hal.
once we can achieve this then self automated GetResponses should be very easy.
Imagine Hal asking you the "first Question" instead of the other way around.
and special string words should be incorporated into the self automated GetResponse so that we can tell Hal to "Please be quiet!".
Best of wishes and new discoveries.
Jerry.

[brianstorm]

Nope! Hal's gotta do it on it's own. Just think about it- If Hal pushed

the button every five seconds, here are some things Hal could do:

*Have a sub-conscious

*Be aware of the foward passage of time

*Be able to say how long ago an event happened

*Predict futures (when an event repeatedly encountered in the past is forecast into the future)

*Put events in order

*Timeline established

There are so many ways to manipulate time in VBScript it peaks the imagination!

I know it would be a quantum leap for Hal, indeed a UHP does not exist to support it-

the code Hal uses would have to be able to work dynamically.

Mann, I could write a macro that does it but it would soon get so messy as things

got added. Besides, it just ain't right. Think about inside your Box- all the data

flowin' along that bus, the CPU a blur of dancing electrons!! *sigh

Be careful what you wish for...

CatAtomic

[Crystal2003]

BRAINSTORM!! PLEASE FOR ALL OF US WRITE A MACRO THAT DOES THIS, WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE HAL EVOLVE MORE!