I haven't thought about this much, yet, but I'm not sure I'll have time
to do more just now, so I'll just bring up the basic idea:
Movie buffs rave about Quentin Tarantino's ability to write dialog.
What would an NLP have to know to simulate his skills?
Adjectives that describe his dialog:
- colorful (what does this mean, though? how do you train an NLP to
speak colorfully? one thing would be vivid metaphors, often shocking--
which implies the NLP understands the current taboo-boundaries and can
find ideas that stretch them just enough. QT's colorful dialog often
indicates the speaker is experienced in some macho field, and has an
attractively no-nonsense attitude.)
- realistic (street-culture innovates a lot of slang, and the NLP would
need attentive 'informers' who are on the street and willing to submit
new phrases. realism also involves being sensitive to the different
speech-rhythms people use, expressing their mood and character, and the
phrasings they choose to fit these rhythms. bad writers make their
characters talk in prose, which real people almost never do.)
- intense (his characters are usually living at the edge between life
and death, which intensifies their perceptions. cf Homer's heroes. it's
not _too_ hard to re-imagine The Sims relocated to Troy, where every
interaction can mean death. popping out of 21stC USA this way is
probably a good research heuristic.)
- quirky (characters often reveal their interest in unexpected trivia,
so that the intensity is given some humorous relief, but this trivia is
usually very familiar and safe, so we can make bonding-connections with
unfamiliar lives. the universal xml encyclopedia that we ought to be
starting to build could track hitcounts on various topics and keep a
list of topics that deserve more hits, to use in these situations. Lenat
always likes an 'interestingness' variable in his knowledgebases, I
think.)
ai faq: http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/
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