Meet HAL. He is an 18-month old baby just starting to learn the basics of speech. He likes to talk about red balls and blue balls, loves his Mommy and Daddy, and likes to go to the park to play. A child development specialist was given transcripts of his conversation and declared him a healthy normal boy. Hard to believe that he is actually a computer program running on a regular Windows PC!

Source: www.a-i.com

HAL was ‘conceived’ by Ai, an international project whose aim is for humans and computers to speak to each other in everyday language. They are using behaviourist principles to teach HAL to hold a conversation. These principles are based on Alan Turing’s view of language being the defining element of intelligence.

If you give a machine the capacity to learn and a willingness to ask questions, you could possibly raise an ‘intelligence’ capable of engaging in rational conversation.

• Visit Ai (the creators) and read about the amazing things they are accomplishing...
• Fancy a chat with HAL? Click here (Remember: He is only 18-months old, so play nice!)
• Ai uses a simple system of rewards and punishments to train the child machine's independent, intelligent-seeming, but ultimately unpredictable actions. Learn more about his education.
• What kind of "brain" does an intelligent machine require?
• What were his first words?
• Join the future now: Create your own HAL personality, and teach it to speak. Or, you can visit the HAL nursery and choose to speak to different HALs all trained by individual users.
• Say what?! Read a few sample conversations with the bots…