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Re: megaHAL



Hello,

* Charles Kroeger [Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 01:57:14PM -0400]:
> Does anyone here use this conversation simulator and if so are the
> conversations interesting? I'm tired of talking to humans, listening to
> their drivil.  Can this package simulate a human conversation,  is megaHAL
> like Julie the AmTrak automated assistant?

I wouldn't say the conversations are interesting, but the bot can
occasionnaly be entertaining.

> What is the Markov Model?

It is a statistical tool used to make up sentences, choosing a new
word in the sentence based on the last N (for megahal I think N=3)
words already chosen. For example when constructing a sentence, if the
partially constructed sentence looks like:

    My linux distribution of choice is

the engine may be biased toward choosing "debian", for the next
word, based on the partial sentence "of choice is" and previous
conversation (since the context is of only three, "linux" and
"distribution" are not taken into account, so the engine might as well
choose something related to your "mid-afternoon snack of choice", or
whatever).

> Can megaHAL synthesize speech or is it like a chat room?

I don't think the speech synthesis is enabled in debian. If you launch
megahal you will engage in a private conversation with the robot.

> What is a 'scripting pleasure module' for perl Python or Tcl?

There are modules available in perl, python and Tcl, for your
scripting pleasure, making it rather easy to use the bot in, say, an
irc channel. If you make it learn from past and live irc sessions, you
might capture the essence of the channel, and get profound insights
when the bot is allowed to speech. Or just get random drivel.

Laurent.


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