• The spell checker has been cleaned up some. The custom dictionary is now shared across the entire application.
• There was still a bug in the core split functionality that sometimes resulted in incorrect weights for an object when the same object was the result of multiple paths, but with different weights.
• Asset editors now have a child topic-editor by default in the project view.
• Some cleanups in the import/export functionality of the thesaurus and assets.
• a bug in the handling of variables in patterns (which resulted in invalid value refs sometimes) is also fixed.
• a new tutorial that shows how to do questions, answers and redirections.

Get the latest release from the download page.

support for multiple speech engines

The first, and most fundamental change is the fact that the system now supports multiple speech engines.  At the moment, there is an implementation for the managed and unmanaged Microsoft SAPI versions. Others might follow. The major reason for this feature is that the SAPI libraries behave differently on different systems and OS’s. This was most apparent in the fact that some voices aren’t properly supported in the managed version. That’s why the unmanaged version has become the default, since it is the most powerful and most stable (also in terms of timing), but XP for instance doesn’t support SAPI 5.3, so this requires the managed version. To select the engine you want to use, go to the menu item: tools/options, select the ‘Speech’ tab and use the combo box to select one of the engines.  Note: before switching engine, it’s best to turn off audio input/output on all chatbot channels.

Alternate input

Also new in this version is the ability to select between alternative input text for voice recognition. The system wont yet automatically be trained with this information though. You can turn this on/off with a new button on the chatbot-local toolbar, to the right of the Audio-in button. When turned on, and the speech engine can provide alternate text values, a dropdown-box will be displayed just below the text (one for each speech salvo). You can select an alternate text from this box. Note that if there aren’t any alternatives, no dropdown is shown. Also, the managed engine can give different results compared to the non-managed version.

New demos

Finally, there are a few new demos included in the installer. 3 new demos that show different ways to implement why-because (and also show how to do have and like). The previous release also had a demo for why-because, but it still had some issues.

That’s it for now, more things to follow…

For the curious, there are actually a number of fixes/updates all over the place:

• Importing/exporting part of a thesaurus has been fixed.
• There was a problem in the ‘rebuild project’ procedure for the thesaurus which has been fixed.
• A do-statement of the form #x.z = #y  now gets a correct y value.
• There’s a new CmdShell extension for scraping xml and html files (from the internet or disk)

2 new demo projects:

• weather.dpl: uses the scraper extension to get the weather info from the Google weather api.
• Why_because.dpl: shows a way how you can correctly handle why/because statements. In the process, it also shows how to do ‘be’, ‘have’ and ‘like’. 2 more versions of this demo will follow shortly.

Note: Deprecated!

It’s time again to do a new release, which was long overdue to tell you the truth. Lots of things have been changed, though mostly in the background, both for the designer and Aici. Here’s a non exhaustive list of the changes:

The designer + core:

Basically, I began the process of improving the feel of the application, to get the prototype taste out of it. It’s not done yet, but things are improving considerably. I am now able to work with the designer for a full day, while keeping memory reasonably under control and with the same speed at the end as at the start. here’s what else got changed:

• Lots of speed improvements (more to go)
• fixed some memory leaks, there are still some more left to plug.
• New instructions: IsClusteredByAny, ChangeChild, ChangeInfo, ChangeParent, Avg (average), Max, Min, StDev
• Added system events OnStarted, OnShutDown, OnSinActivity.
• Added a new system variable: Time (to get the current system time).
• Added back/forward commands to the flow editor.
• Added the ability to manage 1 to 1 thesaurus relationships (from within the thesaurus tool window).
• Added ‘go to unfreeze location’ functionality in the memory profiler.
• Created a custom treeview, currently only used by the thesaurus. There are still a few issues left with the new view, but it fixes some unresolvable issues found in the default (wpf) treeview, so all trees will be replace with this new one in the next releases.
• lots of bug fixes

Aici

Aici has undergone a major upgrade, though mostly in the background, that is to say, to improve already existing functionality or extend it. Here’s what’s new/updated:

• There’s a new stage, just after scanning and before parsing, used to retrieve the different sentences and groupings from the input. This allows the system to process multiple sentences in the input (at the same time). 1 small note: the final stage hasn’t been tested yet, so even though the sentences are recognized, only input with 1 sentence is processed correctly at the moment.
• I’ve changed the semantics processing from a simple transition/translation to a full stage, so the semantic information can be used to do more filtering.
• Yet another new stage has been added to do grammatical analysis (things like figuring out whether an ‘a’ is most likely used as a noun or article.
• The output stage has been adjusted so that the output isn’t directly sent out, but instead stored as neurons that can be used for further analysis while being sent out at a later stage. The analysis itself however isn’t done yet.
• Some new frames have been added, mostly to handle invalid grammar and present/past articles.
• The flow definition has been simplified a bit.
• Lots of bug fixes

Aici-Web

And finally, the newcomer: Aici-web which is a web-based interface of Aici (go figure!). It’s currently implemented in Silverlight (other web technologies should follow). The basic purpose of this website version is 2 folded: as a technology showcase and as a way for me to easily get conversation logs that I can use to improve the network. So go ahead and test the limits, see how fast you can break the thing (shouldn’t be to hard ). You can find it here. (Note: I plan to reset the backing database on a regular basis, to keep the thing fresh and with the latest Aici version.)

Note: Deprecated!

Finally, it’s time for a new release. Most of the changes are in the backend this time, though there are a few visual changes. So here goes:

What’s new

Designer and core

• The storage system has been updated to a binary, flat file structure, which improves the operation speed considerably in all areas. This essentially makes the core a true database system, which should be fairly easily scaled (see thesaurus demo project), even over multiple hardware systems (eventually).
• I  have finally implemented the namespaces. These are currently maintained in the background, so you don’t need to worry about them. The only change you’ll notice, is an improved browser popup in the frame and flow editors (see image). Basically, the thesaurus, timers and all the project editors (with their entry points) are included and automatically updated.
• The frame editor has been updated a bit cause the previous datagrid didn’t handle the custom namespace selection object. So back to listview for the frame elements (will be updated when the datagrid is fixed).
• I have also added a new restriction type for frame elements: a custom filter, which allows you to do determine the filter result through code.
• Support for modules has also been included, though not yet properly tested, so the imports will definitely not yet work.
• The speed increase brought some more threading issues to light, I hope they are now solved, but one or two things can still pop up here or there.
• Somehow, I managed to show the thesaurus in reversed order (so the view for the hypernyms was showing that of the hyponyms). While fixing that, I also tried to get it to work with an arbitrary number of elements (so you can also browse a huge thesaurus, the search hasn’t yet been updated though).
• The thesaurus can now also be built automatically, based on the content of the database.
• I have added a dialog to remove clusters that have no children, based on the ‘remove orphans’ dialog. This will probably grow out to a general purpose query window, but that’s for the next version.
• New instructions (some were long overdue):
  • Substract: remove 1 or more neurons from a set, contained by a variable or global
  • Select: perform a filter on the content of a variable or global.
  • Remove Links In: removes all the incoming links of a neuron that have a specified meaning.
  • Remove links out: same as ‘Remove Links In’, but for the outgoing links. These 2 instructions allow you to do without an extra loop, which makes it all more thread save and faster.
  • GetAt: retrieves the neuron at a specified index in the content of a variable/global.
• I have changed the parameters of the split instruction a little bit: I have removed the ‘result cluster’ which was originally used to retrieve the results of a split. This worked ok, but could cause problems when multiple users would be performing the exact same algorithm. The solution was to simply use the already existing ‘GetSplitResults’ function, which now also works after the split (and not just when the split is still running). This means that you manually need to clear the split result cache once you are done with it, otherwise the next split will give some bogus results.
• I have also removed the possibility to assign a weight value to a single neuron. Instead you now assign it to the entire processor. This will assign it’s weight to all of it’s result values when it is done. This way, you can change the weight before you know the actual result.
• Attached neurons are working.
• some cosmetical touch-ups here and there.
• Lots of other bug fixes.

AICI

The aici network demo is slowly starting to function. That is, it is beginning to record data into understandable structures. Though it’s still very early, so lots of stuff still goes wrong or hasn’t yet been implemented. Some fun responses guaranteed. Here are the major changes:

• I’ve managed to simplify the flow recognition algorithm (while fixing some tough bugs), so no more synchronization points for the loops. The designer still allows to change this prop at the moment, but this will be removed soon.  Don’t worry about existing values, they are simply skipped, no longer used.
• Some bugs in the frame recognition section have also been solved.
• I have implemented a first version of the noun path resolver algorithm. This is used to understand statements like ‘my brother’s sister’, ‘I’, ‘my favorite car’, ‘sister in law’. This algorithm is also responsible for generating new ‘compound words’, like ‘brother in law’.
• Compound words are recognized again, at different stages. Some compounds can’t be recognized yet (if they have verbs).
• New frames:
  • Be-unknown noun: sentences with an agent, be verb and a possible noun. Example sentences: I am Jan. It is a cat. My name is Jan. I was Jan. It will be a cat. (preconditions: Jan and cat are not yet  in the network). The frame is triggered when it receives a sentence that might contain a noun, and there is an open question that can consume this value.
  • some more, to much to write all down.
• If AICI knows several different synonyms for the same word, it will now mimic your preferred one. So if you just said ‘bye’, it will also say ‘bye’ next time. If you say ‘goodbye’ next, it will switch to this.
• I have introduced the concept of ‘attributes’. These provide an extra step in the semantics stage. For instance, ‘color’ is an attribute. It’s possible values are: blue, red, black, white, green,… Color is a special attribute, since it changes meaning when applied to different types of subjects. For instance, the sentence: ‘I am blue’ usually means: ‘I am a bit down’. So that’s the semantic part: an attribute can inspect to who it is applied and, when needed, can change the attribute, the owner or the value.

The latest release can be downloaded from here, or from the main menu.

Coming up

Next in line will be the editor views (finally). These are currently built using standard WPF controls (listboxes, treeviews,…), which are, well, not performing as desired: they generally can’t handle more than 2-300 items (if you can’t use virtualization) and, more importantly, have a hardcoded recursion limit that causes serious problems, primarily in the code editor. So I need some custom controls to get the speed and reliability up.

Before this though, I will be spending a little more time with AICI. The algorithms are beginning to work the way I want them to, so it’s time to complete the flows, in order to get a larger part of the English language parsed. And off course, I will be adding a bunch of new frames, actions and attributes.