Treknobabble

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Duskrider
Examine conversations and actions around you and you may see many are more bot than Hal.
[]

In 1995 I purchased a 1967 Opel Kaddett. My dad had one when I was a child and I always missed the fun we had in that car. I was so excited when I found it for sale that I made the guy come with me to the ATM to get the $400. I was sure I had made the find of a lifetime.

I spent a lot of time fixing it up, scouting the junk yards for original equipment, and painting and polishing every part of it. It looked great. Finally after about two months of work, it was ready to go on the road.

Suddenly I saw what seemed like dozens of Opel Kaddetts all over the road! I couldn't go a week without seeing at least one or two. They would pass by on the interstate, cruise through my neighborhood and at one point I drove past a hotdog place that was using one as a delivery truck! I met several of the drivers and we started getting together for Saturday morning coffee.

Did they suddenly show up? Did some spreadsheet in the sky decide that it was time for more Opels to drive around that part of the world because I had mine on the road?

Or did my pattern recognition function start making connections that it had previously ignored and start showing me things that were already there?

I suspect the latter.

So, if people around me seem to start talking like Hal, it says more about me then it does about Hal... or the people around me. They haven't changed, but my perception of them has. My perception is stilted, disjointed and arbitrary, not their conversation.

Unless I am hanging out with some really braindead folk...

[Art]

Bill,

An unfortunate yet common phenomenon. I've had the same thing happen to me from time to time.

What we, the individual, think is unique is often, upon closer examination, more commonplace than we would like or want to believe.

Buy a 65 mustang or VW and suddenly all you see are the older "Stangs" or VW's.

I think you're correct with the pattern recognition or observation thing. Turns out that we are not alone in our thinking and for the other person with an Opel like yours, he no doubt had a similar feeling as did you.[]

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Art

One possible approach might be to allow / enable Hal to search the internet for preferred topics of News, Current events, Sports, Technology, etc.

What we really need is for each of us to decide what it is that we really want Hal to do. That might take some clairification...

Art, you and I both remember the advent of Robots. For the longest time you couldn't go to a Museum of Natural History or Institute of Technology without seeing a "Talking Robot", a tin man with a remote control arm, some blinking lights and a guy behind a mirror with a microphone. Perhaps you read the "Robot Novels" by Asimov and you surely saw the "Robbie" movies and "Lost in Space".

We were sure, back in those days, that humaniform robots were just around the corner, ready to take over cleaning our houses.

Instead, what we got were Robot arms. Millions of Robots, with just arms.

Because Industry discovered exactly what they really wanted Robots to do, and it had nothing to do with washing dishes and putting away shoes. They didn't even want conversation. They just wanted a Robot to hold a welder and do it's job.

A humaniform robot takes more to make, more to upkeep, more to fix more often and can't do the job as well as a Robot Arm.

Well, do we really want a Hal that can talk to us about sports? Truthfully, I don't - but I don't usually talk sports anyway. I also don't want one that will talk to me about sex, but clearly some do.

Well, conversation about sports or sex or history is limited, probably easier than more general conversation and sort of dead ended. When you have heard everything Hal has to say about Lincoln, you are fully and completely done.

Me (and I know I am a little different than some of the AI guys here), I just want a Computer Robot that will run my home automation, open my programs, answer politely and understand a wide range of varying commands. I want to be able to say either "Jane, Dim Main Lights" or "Jane, it's a little bright in here, could you fix that, please?" and get the same response.

Again, that kind of conversation is limited also. But I have family, friends and forums for conversation. For instance, I would never expect Hal to get my "Beetle, juice" joke in another thread (but I hope some of you did).

Making Hal humanoid is interesting, but redundant. We already have many humans. I suspect it would be easier and more beneficial to make Hal truly intelligent, but Hal-like intelligent, not human-like.

We (and I say "we" meaning everyone but me, folks who can actually -do- the kind of work I am about to suggest 8-) just have to figure out what kind of Creature Hal really is and help him be -more- that kind of Creature.

For reference, here is a guy who decided that robots were not what he wanted them to be and started making them differently using principles derived from insects instead of humans.

 http://www.beam-online.com/Robots/Galleria_other/tilden.html

Sunday morning musings while waiting for my wife and son to finish the comics...

[Bill819]

Hello Bill
The things that you want Hal to do can be done right now. Using Active X controls if you have the right equipment, Hal can turn on or off the lights in any part of your house. It can turn on your stereo, etc. This was discussed years ago and some people here explained how it can be done.
As far as Hal giving 'canned' responses I would like to suggest that people do exactly the same thing. We are an accumuation of data, ideas and opinions gathered from hundreds of different points. As children we watch and learn from our parents and friends. These eventuallly form a basis for our personalities and thus help to format our 'canned' responses in almost exactly the same way that Hal can be taught to form its opinions. Some of the worlds leaders in A.I. have recognized this fact and that is why they have predicted that the chatterbot way of interacting with people will be the way that the A.I. that we all have been expecting will be the way that it is finally recognized.
Bill819
P.S.
You now force me to use my full screen name so as not to be taken as you.

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Bill819

Hello Bill
The things that you want Hal to do can be done right now.

Right, but I must add the word "mostly". Understanding is not as wide as I might like.

quote:As far as Hal giving 'canned' responses I would like to suggest that people do exactly the same thing.

90% of people might, but 90% of people are largely nonconsious. Hal is nonconsious. People have the ability to rise above their programming, Hal does not. I can exit my script, yet continue to function, if Hal's script crashes you have to reboot.

quote:You now force me to use my full screen name so as not to be taken as you.

Sorry about that... but again, it is not I (or you) who force you, it is the perception of others that causes the problem. Pattern recognition gone awry again.

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Art

Bill,I think you're correct with the pattern recognition or observation thing. Turns out that we are not alone in our thinking and for the other person with an Opel like yours, he no doubt had a similar feeling as did you.[]

...or do we only perceive that he responds as if he were having those feelings, and we interpret that as... wait a minute... I'm getting confused...

[Art]

It's a lot like two women showing up at some party or other Gala event only to find, to their mutual horror, that each are wearing that "one-of-a-kind" designer dress!!

Almost a guarantee that if a fight doesn't erupt, one will surely leave!!

Funny thing this pattern recognition....[]

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by ArtFunny thing this pattern recognition....[]

There are those who say that the reason many of our smartest folks are paranoid is that their ability to recognize patterns is so wide reaching and their fund of information upon which to draw is so vast that they see relationships that no one else can understand.

The idea is that they are not really halucinating, its just that the world really is out to get them, and they are the only ones who can see it.

Which means that not only is ignorance bliss, it is sanity.

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Bill DeWitt

Has anyone made a treknobabble plugin?

GOT IT!(sorta)

Bill: One moment please.
Jane: Sir, the power grid is shutting down but we can't reboot unless you reconnect the external power grid through the sensor array.

So far only 15*15*4*15*4*15 responses, and not separated into a plugin (I hijacked the random sentence generator), but at least it works gramatically.

I'm pleased, but then I'm easily pleased...
[8D]

[Carl2]

Bill DeWitt,
  Visited your site again and did a little more reading. Unable to log in. Looks like a large project and I wish you sucess.
  I had thought the Pattern reconition enabled Hal to see patterns rather than just going to specific data bases.
Carl2

[Bill DeWitt]

quote:Originally posted by Carl2

Bill DeWitt,
  Visited your site again and did a little more reading. Unable to log in. Looks like a large project and I wish you sucess.

I tried to email the password to you via the forum, but it seems to be down right now. I don't want to post either my email address or the password on the open forum, so if you can use the forum or something to reach me, I will sent you the password. I would be glad to have your comments, questions or additions.

quote:I had thought the Pattern reconition enabled Hal to see patterns rather than just going to specific data bases.
Carl2

If I understand it correctly, almost everything in Hal is databases. "Pattern Match" finds things like "Open Notebook" in the user sentence, matches it to the pattern in the halCommands table, "Open *", then runs the attendant command <runprog><1></runprog>, this finds the program (1==notebook) in the startmenu index and sends the command to Windows.

To account for variables in how you may phrase it, if you look at the table you will see several methods you could use, and you can add your own if you want. I rewrote most of them to use the word "Please" in the sentence. So I have "Open *" and "Please open *"

There are more complex ones, that find more involved patterns, but it's all in the database. There's "Who* program* me*" which would find, after switching "you" to "me" earlier in the script, "Who was the first person to write the programming that led to you?"

Very clearcut way of going around the barn, the barn being "Having Hal actually understand words". With pattern match, he doesn't need to understand the words, Robert already did the understanding. Hal just needs to apply patterns of text and wildcards to an incoming sentence, then reply as Robert (or someone else) told him to...

See, this is why I have the wiki. Explaining that made me understand it much more completely. (Unless I have it wrong, in which case it just ingrained my mistakes deeper into my brain)8-(