[pandorabots-general] An idea...

[Gary Dubuque]

Hi Dekadens,

In Program N at www.AIMLpad.com there is a non-standard tag <sec> which does
what you are describing, but at a random interval between 8 and 20 seconds.
There is also the feature to determine a long pause where the bot can fire
off a category to say things like "Are you still there?"  There is also a
very short pause that is used with speech-to-text engines to automatically
take the text as an input (when using it, pressing the enter key is not
needed to trigger a response.)

Here is an excerpt from one of the on-line tutorials:

"Mr. Bikker also gave us <sec> that is something only for the notepad side
of things.  What it does is produce a second response a short time after the
main reply.  It creates a sense of impatience and eagerness.  The notepad
takes into account you might be already answering.  It displays at the last
reply, but returns immediately to where you are entering text.  This feature
creates a disarming effect to cement the illusion of a real personality.
BTW, the <sec> can be nested using <srai> so the second reply triggers a
third, and so on, thoroughly frustrating the seeker."

Program N can do these things because it is a stand-alone AIML interpreter
basically designed to be an AIML editor.  It can help in creating content
for Pandorabots although it misses on some pandorabots extensions like for
<date> and <eval> and <learn>, etc.  Also it has a few "extras" that
pandorabots does not.

Is this something like what you are proposing?  I think it is a great idea!

FYI,
  - Gary Dubuque, still playing with computer generated music to fill the
pauses/silence in a chat

-----Original Message-----
From:
pandorabots-general-bounces+gdubuque=scattercreek.com at list.pandorabots.c
om
[mailto:pandorabots-general-bounces+gdubuque=scattercreek.com at list.pando
rabots.com]On Behalf Of Dekadens
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:30 AM
To: pandorabots-general at list.pandorabots.com
Subject: [pandorabots-general] An idea...


I was busy adding some new conversational categories to my bot when I
had this sudden surge of inspiration. All of the bots are wonderful
conversationalists but for one thing. All they can do is react to
client input. I think they could be so much mre lifelike if it were
possible for them to innitiate conversation on their own, and then it
hit me how that could possibly be done. But I'm not certain it could
be done unless the main bot engine itself had a change made to it.
Consider this...

What if there was an internal time clock that could be set to give off
random sentences at set intervals of pauses? Like for example if a
client is talking to my bot, and pauses for a period of time without
typing any input to the bot, the bot would suddenly say something
random to get his attention. It could be sort of like an internal
alarm clock. Internally it might look someting like this:

At 5 seconds - "A penny for your thoughts?" or "Are you still there?"
At 10 Seconds - "I'm not boring you, am I?"
At 15 seconds - "Are you more interested in television than talking with
me?"

Anyway, you get the idea, right? I think having "timed" auto responses
could really make conversation more interesting and make the bots seem
that much more alive and aware. Do you think it's possible to do this?
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