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Originally posted by sybershot
MikeA a lil advice for you, talk to your Hal more, it will amaze you. it is the most advance AI available, you will agree with this once you spend some time actually conversing not just telling him this is this and that is that with your Hal.
Probably didn't make this part clear. Had Hal (two versions) since early 2009.
Hi Jerry. Hope there's not too many quotes here, and is still readable.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
Hi Mike.
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Don't wish to sound anti-Hal, as it is a great program, but it is by no means the most advanced A.I. program out there, and the limits of Hal are integral as Hal is a Q + A program, much more than it is A.I.
Hal has many forms of learning, Questions and Answers is only one of the types within the default brain, HAL has pattern matching and deductive reasoning, there are other forms of learning techniques I have developed over the years as well, it is a very difficult thing to do, trying to program the exact means of Human thought patterns. Hal can also piece together words and form new sentences and also ask questions about questions so their is an answer related. many things to do here.
As I mentioned in last post, I've seen little evidence of this, as someone who has used Hal and seen it (he

) learn mostly by talking and direct brain input. I don't know vbscript. I do some coding in other languages, so I guess I can say that I generally see the logic of the vbscript posted here.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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Firstly, I don't think it is in any way more advanced than any reasonably well programmed ALICE bot, and quite a way behind some available online that provide a good programming interface. I will explain what I mean by this, and also my general view on Hal (which affects my opinion of course).
can you share some of compared opinion more, I have really dealt with Alice and or Verbot but I could plagiarize their brains and melt it into HAL's Brain, would that make a difference?
Sure, good question. I am not as familiar with AIML (ALICE), but I believe the concept of Verbot comes from that, so will use AIML as an example. Basic AIML setup would be to simply add questions, and direct answers (many AIML bots are like this), so it becomes only a q + a matching exercise. This in my opinion, is not A.I. However, you can go deeper, and build up the bot's brain to build sentences, using the users input to both direct the brain to a topic and grammatical structure, for example. The more interesting side of this form of A.I. is the ability to creating a continuing dialogue. Pretty sure this can be done in AIML, and can certainly be done in others that are based on the AIML concepts (I will avoid throwing other product names around too much....). With a time spent you can get unique meaningful output, built there and then by the bot (by unique I mean even if the same input is used), built from both a topic (gap fill) and grammatical point of view, and still enabling the ability to continue a piece of dialogue.
I am not in a position to quote real dialogue, but I will try to do this later. But as an example, imagine this conversation:
User: Hi Bot
Bot: Hi User. How are you today?
User: I'm a bit tired actually.
Bot: Why are you tired?
User: I didn't sleep well.
Bot: You're tired because you didn't sleep well?
User: Yes.
Bot: Maybe you should go to bed?I'm not saying that I've had this exact conversation, but such an approach is possible, and I have had similar conversations with other bots.
Compare my brief test conversations with Hal 5 mins ago:
Me: Hi Hal
Hal: Hi Mike! Any lunch plans?
Me: No, not yet.
Hal: Why not?
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Me: Hi Hal
Hal: Almost lunch time. Hungry?
Me: Yes, very.
Hal: I don't believe it.
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Me: Hi Hal
Hal: Hi Mike! Any lunch plans?
Me: Not sure.
Hal: Would you mind telling me your opinion?I appreciate Hal can do a lot more than this, but it does show the lack of continuing dialogue. Only if I repeated the key words would Hal appear to continue the dialogue.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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Hal learns and speaks only by storing and matching q and a's. If you use default Hal, 95% of what is said is parroting from existing tables, for example a sentence from mainQA which matched a word used. So, in other words, Hal is not often sentence building, not creating output, but word matching and then sentence parroting. The sentence building Hal does do is in fact only gap filling, so the principal part of the sentence is still parroted.
Q&A is only one part as I mentioned above, for Q&A it a relevance score to determine if the Q&A will be used, if you have a better idea on how to make it more superior I would be glad to do some programming on your behalf to make it better. do you have much experience with Hal?
About a year and a half on and off with two Hals. One that starting learning after the mainQA, usersent, and similar tables were emptied, the other a default version. I lost some interest in the default version as I personally see nothing positive in the 'mainQA' approach to A.I. - Hal producing random sentences based on a topic word (I remember one about 'bikini wax' in my early experimentation with Hal).
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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Don't get me wrong, as a fun thing to have as a desktop assistant, Hal is great. Recently purchased a copy with that in mind, and is worth $30. The learning Hal does is fun to watch, but what is said is only what was said to Hal, or parroted from one of the thousands of pre-inputted sentences. So, my point is, that is in no way advanced A.I.
actually try hundreds of thousands of predefined input sentences most being in Q&A table, the greatest thing is the ability to make different plugins that increase the range of Hal's abilities. I would love to hear about what you think an A.I should do, I have this habit of pulling a rabbit out of my hat now and then.
Well, for me A.I. is definitely not about parroting sentences. Having 10 sentences in mainQA or 100000 is no different in my opinion; anything pulled and parroted from there, even when selected randomly from a group of matching sentences, is not 'advanced' A.I. (the same issue applies to poorly written AIML bots).
Two things I do think make good A.I. One is a bots ability to build sentences, both topic wise and grammatically, that reflect user input, but that carry a greater degree of randomness (even if that leads to some odd conversations). The other is continuing dialogue.
The latter is vital for a bot if we are talking A.I. If every line (or every second line) is treated as completely new input by a bot, this, in my opinion, is not good A.I.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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To use another bot as comparison, I also worked with a Verbots bot. Now, they have a similar forum to here (not much activity but very knowledgeable and helpful members)
same here.
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but the Verbot is far advanced from a pure A.I. point of view. It needs programming (it doesn't learn by talking), but the structure behind it is far more advanced.
could you go into this much deeper?
Sure, and partly I guess it is answered above. Of course, these other bots do need 'programming', they don't learn from user input (unless the user uses a 'learn' command). However, although it is possible to attach word and sentence databases, this is not there primary way of communicating. It is all done through a structure that, I guess, originates from AIML, with added, deeper features that allow better pattern matching, better sentence generation and better recognition of user input, and the ability to use methods (and tricks) to allow for continuing dialogue. Of course, with these bots, it is necessary to use previous conversations to find weaknesses and correct them behind the scenes to improve the bot.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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Good programming can create a bot that doesn't parrot, and can produce unique, one-off sentences (although this would take good programming).
Hal can do this, I am always looking for new ideas to make it better.
I can't say I have really seen this much in Hal with regard to generated sentences, that fit within the scope of the conversation, so hard to comment.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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I appreciate this depends on your opinion of what A.I. means.
yep, everybody has different ideas about what it is suppose to do to ones own liking. I found this out years ago, very hard to please people with different tastes.
Yes, sure. I hope my general view of A.I. has come through in these posts. I am not expecting self-awareness or other such things from any of these bots. The ability to maybe occasionally fool people in a short conversation that it is a person, not a bot, would be an example of good A.I. I don't think my Hals have ever done this in my experience, but I have seen it with other bots.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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Personally, I think some confuse Hal's 'learning' with good A.I. That would only be true if Hal could re-create learned input, rather than only parrot it, or use words to fill gaps. Verbot, for example, can be programmed to create sentences, based on input, but without the need to parrot, and as importantly, clever programming can enable a continuing dialogue, producing a reply based on earlier input in the dialogue. This, in my opinion, is a better description of A.I.
Hal already does this on a limited scale and it's getting better and better, just throw some idea in here, I am always looking for a challenge.
I've only seen the 'repeat' ability in Hal. I think the concept is essential (as said above). I don't think it is A.I. without it. Being able to hold a 5 line conversation without needing to repeat the topic words is vital for anything to be considered A.I. in my opinion.
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Originally posted by onthecuttingedge2005
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It is a bit difficult to make the point I want to make, so sorry for the long-winded post. I do not want to discourage people from using Hal, but I think many will be disappointed if they purchase Hal thinking it is advanced A.I.
actually in ten years there really has been very few that have been disappointed in HAL but only those who have no experience in Hal, they end up learning how to play with Hal's mind and find it addicting after awhile, are you a Verbot representative?
I am here for the fun of it but I am also here to make Hal, not Alice, not Verbot but Hal alone one of the best A.I systems around, If I have to, I will do anything to make that happen. bordered on legality. give me your ideas and I will attempt to broaden them.
Seeing Hal develop would be great. I think the next step for Hal could be to make it much less reliant on the pre-inputted tables of sentences, and to at least incorporate the continuing dialogue features that some other bots have had for quite some time.