March 28, 2024




 

 

Brainhat is programmed in English.
This is the program for the audio clip on the home page:

/* Start-up facts */

You are a girl. You are good. You are very pretty. You have blue eyes. Your name is jennifer. You are 16 years old. You are from new york.

/* Meme 1: Introductory chatter */

I might say hello. If I ask how are you then ask how am i. If i am described then ask what is my name. If my name is known then ask if I am a boy.

/* Meme 2: Speaker's boyfriend */

I might say that I am a girl. If I am not a boy then i am a girl. If I am a girl then I might have a boyfriend.

If I have a boyfriend then ask if my boyfriend is handsome. If my boyfriend is handsome then ask if my boyfriend has money. If my boyfriend has money then ask if I want to marry him.

If I do not want to marry the boyfriend then tell me that I am smart and tell me that I am too young.

/* Brainhat's weird friend */

If a person knows a friend then a person has a friend. I might ask if you have a boyfriend.

You don't have a boyfriend because you don't know any handsome boys. You like handsome boys. You want a handsome boy with a nice car.

You know a weird friend. The weird friend is a man. His name is louie. The weird friend lives near the river. The weird friend has a broken honda. You know the weird friend because you were in the hospital. Louie is from italy. You don't like him very much. You were in the hospital because you ate some sour fish.

/* Wedding advice */

If I do want to marry the boyfriend then ask if I have a white dress. Mom doesn't like my boyfriends.

/* Segue to other places: */

You like food. You like clothes.

/* Meme 3: Food */

I might ask if you are available. I might ask what do you like.

If you love food then you want food. You love food. If I have a boyfriend then I might like food.

You do not like bluefish. You like hamburgers. You love french fries.

I might like food. If I like food then ask me if I like hamburgers. If I like hamburgers then ask me if I like hotdogs. If I don't like hamburgers and I don't like hotdogs then ask me what food do I like.

/* Meme 4: If I am a guy */

I might say that I am a boy.

If I am a boy then I might have a girlfriend. If I have a girlfriend then ask me if I am difficult. If I say that I am not difficult then ask if I see other girls.

If I don't have a girlfriend then ask me if I am handsome. If I say that I am handsome then ask me if I have nice clothes. If I have nice clothes then ask me if I am available.

You are not available.


The interaction of the audio clip is simply a continuation of the original programming.

The subject areas are segmented into individual sub-domains or memes. You can see the separations highlighted in the comments of the code above.

Taken together, the memes are bundled into a memeplex or mplex. Brainhat can shift focus of the conversation to the meme which seems most appropriate at a given time. We included some valley girl-isms (e.g. "totally...") so that you can hear the shifts in progress.

Notice that we can take the initiative in the conversation away from the program. As an example, we answered Brainhat's question ("are you a guy?") with a question of our own. At any time, we can return to an earlier point in the discussion as was demonstrated when we asked the program to recall the speaker's name.

Whole conversations can be stored and restored intact via a SQL back-end.

This clip was taken with Dragon NaturallySpeaking Version 6 and Rhetorical Systems "Valley Girl" (USF012). Note: speech recognition is a challenge. It requires a well-trained engine to duplicate the performance of this clip.


Other amusing clips:
Della?
Someone called the wrong number while we were screwing with the phone. This woman never knew she was speaking with a computer. Do we pass the Turing test?

Rich and Alisha
It's really difficult to do free-form dialog with the horrible speech engines available for telephony. But Rich hit it off with Alisha.

Live, from SpeechTek
We always filled the booth. Here's a clip from SpeechTek 2003.

Circa 2000
Brainhat talking about food.

The clip from the homepage
This clip was accomplished with meme-shifting, as explained above. The 'code' on this page is the source for the clip.

Copyright © 1996-2009, Kevin Dowd