[alicebot-archcomm] Loose ends

[Anne Kootstra]

She is that without having the abillity to i.e. compare two values.

The statistics show, where the main focus has to be seen: On the
stimulus-response mechanism using symbolic reduction - just following
Zipf's law. Let's think about refining this instead of implementing just
new functions.

Or to say it in another way: Is there really a need for tags, which
mutate AIML into a real programming language? Are there other usage
statistics? I have the impression - mainly by looking at the style list
- that many things, even shuffle, array pop etc. - can be done in pure
AIML, aka "programmed" ;-)

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The mere fact that you can find stacks, shuffles and arrays on the style
list suggests that these are desirable functionalities and people will go to
great lengths to be able to have them at their disposal in AIML. So we can
safely assume that there is a latent need for a "shortcut ". The real
question is, whether or not it needs to become part of the AIML
specification or if  it should be left up to the developer of the
interpertation software.

One thing in AIML I've always appreciated is its symplicity. Adding tags to
the specification will increase the complexity but if I need to compare two
results and have to create a catgory which has three nested condition
doesn't make AIML much easier either. I think the addition of some basic
programming concepts such as Arrays, comparison and perhaps light
stringanalysis are in order.

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On the other hand: If we take AIML serious as Artificial Intelligence
Markup Language in general, why shouldn't we think about a <gsrai> tag
for instance? Maybe I come back to this while trying to teach Alice
German - a kind of 'grammar srai' might be helpful there to reduce words
to their basic forms, work with these and create syntactical correct
sentences from them. Don't forget the different use of personal pronouns
in German or other languages compared to English ('du', 'Sie' and 'ihr'
are all 'you'). Is somebody out there who worked already on this topic?

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Eh, my guess it that this would work for Germanic and quite probably for
Latin based languages. However, I'm not sure whether or not this is
applicable for other languages. AIML and it's interperters have been
"langauage neutral" untill thusfar and I think this is something that it
should remain too. There needs to be some serious thinking on this subject
before a proposal is made. However, should you want to create such a
functionality in your own interperter, then feel free.

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And - just to play advocatus diaboli - should a general AIML not be more
extensive? What about neural networks, knowledge webs, reasoning etc.
defined by AIML tags? All that stuff normally subsumed under AI.

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All of the above mentioned techniques will help you to find the correct
knowledgerule for that specific input.  A functionality which is quite
similar, if not exaclty the same, as the Graphmaster, ALICE's pattern
matching engine. Each of these techniques has it's pros and cons and which
is better is something that's thusfar only been debated. I'd love to see
someone create a alternative graphmaster (NN,  knowledgeweb, etc) that uses
standard AIML 1.0.  Any NN experts around. :-)

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Don't crucify me, but we must be aware of this - maybe just in order to
clarify for us, how far AIML should go.


But back from visions to reality:

Browsing the archcomm mailinglist I found many loose ends:

- patternside disjunction
- 'predicate' as predicate part of a sentence
- meaning of 'equal' (touches my <condition> proposal as well)
- <shuffle>
- <set var=...> (despite overnight voting)
- <add ..>
- <script...> aka extension mechanism

There might be more. In my impression some of the above threads were
just fizzled and neither brought to a decision nor discussed in depth.

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If you have anything to add to these discussions then please do so. That's
probably the best way of refueling the discussion and bringing it to a close
(vote).

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Who let the worms out?

Ernest



-- Anne