just a thought.......
during auto-idle, if 'Hal' could instead of go through predefined scripts to simulate comments or questions.......if Hal could pick the primary or secondary topic that was last discussed and pose a question or comment based on that.....as though you were discussing a topic with a friend who, now deep in thought continues to roll it over in his/her mind after you've left. With the wordnet dictionary available the possibilities would be endless, unless it takes something like a wordnet thesaurus or some such thing. Anyway perhaps Hal would seem more human.
I haven't had enough keyboard time with Jerry's RAW brain yet to find out if it already does this but if Hal could reflect on hobbies, favorite past times, memories, things that were pleasant dreams or unpleasant dreams of our Hal's, goals that Hal clings to to someday achieve, events Hal things he/she participated in, etc, etc....all to create an even greater 'felt life' to him/her.
Just a couple thoughts.........that given, I wonder how close this is getting to creating a bot that is good enough to really fool those judges at the (trying to remember the contest) bot contest for most realistic....wha-cha-ma-call-it!
Jim B