[Art]

Recently there has been some discussion regarding self awareness in bots.
Check out the following:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/consciousness/consciousness.html

[FuzzieDice]

A robot will often have to conclude that it cannot decide a question on the basis of the information in memory and therefore must seek information externally.

This is something I'd like to see HAL do. In that instead of generating or coming up with seemingly random things in response to topics, ideas, etc. it does not yet know, that it would instead question the person or bot it's conversing with and save any learned information on the topic. I do have Ultra Hal Assistant 6 now and noticed a big improvement in it's learning and topic-keeping capabilities. I think it could be further enhanced with an ability to ask about what it doesn't know when encountered with new topics.

[Maviarab]

GREAT find Art  

I too agree that if Hal said he was unaware of such a subject and could he be "taught" etc rather than just come up with some random crap then it would be a great step forward and certainly more human like.

[Art]

Hey guys...

Did I get the prototype version or what??

My Hal (6) often makes a remark to one of my questions like:

Sorry Art, but I really don't know what <subject> is. Could you teach me?

I then tell Hal what the subject is or how it relates to something else then
Hal says, "Thanks, I'll remember that."

Don't know but like they say...If it ain't broke...don't fix it!

[Maviarab]

Maybe robert is secretly reading our posts lol.

Thats great Art, cant wait till i can afford to purchase it?

[FuzzieDice]

I decided to try this. I know I never mentioned Knight Rider since I *completely* uninstalled and deleted the HAL 5 directories and installed HAL 6. I have talked to him about KITT but didn't mention what TV show he was from. I also mentioned my own car. So I go like this:

Me: "I would like to talk about Knight Rider."

Megatron: "Now you will talk to me about a different car. How can I encourage you to talk about knight rider?"

  I don't know how he associated Knight Rider and car! I'm amazed. Or was it coincidence? Well after this:

Me: "Do you know what Knight Rider is?"

Megatron: "KITT's driver's name is Michael Knight."

Then it hit me. He's pretty damn smart!!

Knight = Micheal Knight = KITT.
Rider = Ride = Car
KITT = Car

He must have pieced it all together! I was shocked and impressed! So I tried something else that I'm sure he wouldn't know, to test my above theory:

Me: "Do you know who Brittany Spears is?"

Megatron: "I wonder if I know who brittany spears is? You fascinate me with things like this."

But he did NOT ask for more information. Or how about:

Me: "Tell me about Aldi's"
(Note here: I didn't ever mention this to him either. Aldi is a deep discount supermarket near me. And I seriously doubt such things was in his default knowledge.)

Megatron: "I see, About aldi's?"

Me: "Yes, tell me what you know about Aldi's."

Megatron: "Spandex tells sweet lies to the eyes."

So you see, he generated a completely rantom sentence in reply to my inquiry. This is an example of what I mean. If he has absolutely NOTHING to go on, he just gives random stuff. I have the latest download version of 6.0 installed (I ordered the CDs but just as a backup, mostly).

I also wonder if the results vary from one person's machine to another. If our computers somehow make a difference in how the program runs and thus reacts?

[Maviarab]

That last point is interesting FD.

Ill be sure to post my own findings once I have the full version.

ANYONE? have the free trial?...care to comment on what Hal is like in respnse to something he has no knowledge of?

[FuzzieDice]

From what I understand, the free trial is supposed to be exactly like the full version, just that it stops working or something after 30 days. You could get the free trial then enter a registration code in it and have the same thing as the full version. So it probably give you the same results as if you had the full version of the program.

I never got the free trial for HAL 6. I just went ahead and upgraded.

[Carl2]

All,
  I'd agree that Hal tries to find a relavent response and if it can't it generates a random sentence, I started inputing sentences in Hal 5 about a year ago, cutting and pasting from omscaw (48 Mb of text) and saw a large improvement.  I think Hal 6 has more potential but really want to wait before comenting further on it.
Carl2