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Re: [Wintermute-devel] [update] SII, Unite!

 

On 20 August 2011 10:18, Jacky Alcine <jackyalcine@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> **
>
> Although this message is targeted at the developers, I encourage the
> robopsychologists enrolled to read this message and give any kind of
> feedback they see fit. It's your job, after all :)
>

>
> It's been ages since I've seen any kind of real, dynamic activity from
> other people on this time than Adrian (gentoolx) and I.
>

My apologies, Jacky; I'm still getting the dosage right for my meds; it
currently feels like I'm wearing a diving suit. (A big one made of
cast-iron, at that)


> For those who don't know, we've moved bits of code from Launchpad to GitHub
> and re-imported back into Launchpad so we can still use this team system on
> Launchpad and use its APT system (until, of course, we can form our own) and
> still utilize the social and ever-growing community that's on GitHub. I'm
> actually considering getting this project onto SourceForge, but that'll
> require a bit of work.
>

Good idea; Launchpad is not known for building communities
(running communities, yes, but not inspiring them)


>
>
> I'm asking the developers who wish to branded the programmers behind a
> monolith of technology (open source tech, at that!) that just so happens to
> shake up the word of artificial intelligence (or at least the F/OSS
> community). I strongly urge you to update (or clone, if you haven't) your
> local branches and build the documentation available. There's a TODO page
> generated for each and every branch. It'd be fantastic if we, the team, not
> just I, saw like 3, 4 (heck, maybe 20) revisions based off the attacking and
> completion of these TODOs.
>
>
>
> If people are curious about the development path for Wintermute, I'd fix
> that now. Adrian and I are currently working (mostly Adrian, he's online
> more often than me now) on a specification for Wintermute's plug-in
> architecture. Also, there's a specification still in the drafts regarding
> how data (currently only for WntrLing) will be organized. We *need* to
> figure out how we can:
>
>    - Devise a means of representing, crafting, editing and transporting
>    ontologies and their concepts in Wintermute. With a search on the Web about
>    the definition of "ontology", you'd get a varying set of definitions. This
>    is the definition that I made and think is the most approriate for
>    Wintermute:
>
>    "An ontology is a white box of information (as opposed to the black box
>    idea or a Pandora's box situation). It's organized in a particular fashion
>    to represent knowledge. Knowledge can be a data triple in this particular
>    case, where the data are pure concepts. A concept is merely a bit of
>    information that only becomes knowledge once it's linked with something else
>    via something else. For example, Boy is a concept. Boys are human is a data
>    triple with three concepts, two representing data and a third representing
>    the relationship between the two (in this case, a hypernymy.)"
>
>
In terms of pure natural language processing; an Ontology can also be
thought of as this; imagine a keyword; this keyword leads to a pure,
unfiltered concept (which in turn, by simple order of presentation, may lead
itself to an entirely different bunch of keywords.) A bunch of keywords
represent both a bunch of concepts, as well as one (or more) other concepts
that arise from the combination of such keywords. To add to this complexity;
there are entirely different meanings generated from multiple groups of
keywords, etc. The 'layers' are not easily distinguishable; it isn't like an
onion: one layer with one group of concepts may lead itself to a layer that
is more or less complex then itself. That layer, in turn, may be able to
support more layers of complexity with certain concepts, whilst only able to
support basic levels of complexity with other concepts. I'm attempting to
think of a good, descriptive term for the entire system. The English
language does not have one; nor does Lojban. Hmm.

Oooh, I know! It's rather like a multidimensional onion, starting with five
dimensions and heading into infinitude.

...come to think of it; that isn't a simple explanation at all...hmmm....


>
>    - Begin crafting the GUI and see how the natural language user
>    interface (NLUI) can be implemented via GUI or human interaction devices
>    (HIDs). All of this could be placed on a Wiki page (someone is open to start
>    it) as we did for the possible avatars for Wintermute. The plugin system is
>    now in early shaping, but yet the graphical user interface system lives.
>    Currently, it's just opening a window made using Qt Designer, but after open
>    discussion (or by creating a replicia of the plug-in branch and making a
>    different copy) can you then have your work pushed into the final revisions.
>
>
>
This has taken most of my attention; such a UI requirement is practically
unique; there have been attempts at inserting an agent into a GUI or
CLI environment, but these have been met with little success (IE: think of
MSAgent in Windows XP, the agent characters it created were often in the way
of important UI elements, and did not make it easy nor practical to use
in lieu of menus and buttons.) Instead some lessons can be learnt from the
UI of smartphones or the 10-foot interface paradigm used in media centers.
It is safe to say, however, that a traditional dock/taskbar will simply not
function as well in a natural language environment as it does with a full
GUI. The 'Desktop' may be made of panels, each capable of displaying
information in a way the user does not need to continually focus on and use.

Basically, we need to think of a design that is both eye-catching, beautiful
and brilliant. It needs to be something that can give feedback/information
to the user even when they are not in front of the machine. Speech
synth/recog would make it so much easier...

Atypical buttons, scrollbars, menus, indicators etc would be
counter-productive; if anyone's going to make use of Wintermute, it needs to
be able to perform functions without them. It needs to be able to operate
entirely without mouse/keyboard input. This is a new human/computer
interaction paradigm. It is literally fresh, new ground.

Think of something like the Jarvis AI from the Iron Man films; most of the
work, you would notice, is done by the A.I. without much visual feedback;
any it provided through the displays were in a flexible and rather beautiful
manner that adjusted to the information flawlessly.


>
>    - Draw up the initial data sect to be inserted into Wintermute.
>    Currently, I'm focused on getting the NLP engine as far away as possible
>    from falling into a BNF-style grammar or practically becoming a self-made
>    AIML input system. What I am noticing is that Wintermute really knows
>    nothing about everything. Aside from the fact that I have to teach it
>    grammar (it doesn't reply to anything I say, just so you know; merely shows
>    me the linkages in sentences at the moment [not LINKGRAMMAR!]), it has no
>    way of really knowing the properties of the objects it refers to. This is
>    dependenent solely on the ontology, hence why it needs to be up ASAP.
>
> Critiques, responses and opinions are more than welcome; they're
> recommended! Do your part to keep Wintermute steamrolling! We want another
> interview from OMG!Ubuntu,
>

Yes, we do. Can someone please get on the horn with them and see if we can
have a proper interview; not a random mashup of info we had last time? :P

> or perhaps appear places. More than that, we want to build something that
> we won't have to wait for. You're on the team, do something! (:D)
>

This is not misplaced enthusiasm; this system can and will work if you help.
Not only would you be behind one of the major engineering problems of the
last 50 years which has been solved piecemeal by closed- source companies
which shortly lost their technology as they went backkrupt (AI does not lend
itself to money-making).

Your in what could very well be in the biggest F/OSS A.I. lab ever created.
You have what it takes to help everyone, so let's get to it, ladies and
gentlemen! We have a future to build; don't disappoint me ;)

> --
>
> Jacky Alcine <http://www.jackyalcine.co.cc>
>
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>


-- 

-Danté Ashton

Vi Veri Veniversum Vivus Vici


Sent from Ubuntu