Applying Cyranus

Julie is intended to be a rather extreme example of a personality rich, active, emo-tional assisting agent. This shall enable further examinations on whether and by whom this is perceived as distracting and offensive, or funny and attracting. For commercial use, marketing considerations would certainly require the reduction of the intensity some parameters.

Experimentally, mini-dramas were devised for Julie. The mini-drama “I want to be your friend” was implemented. Julie will begin by throwing in some nasty remarks like

“I don’t think that we are going to get along with each other” – “why?” (typed) – “I do not want to tell”.

A bit later, Julie will resume the topic:

“Do you really want me to tell you what the problem between us is?” – “yes”

(typed) - “I think I really want to be your friend, but this is not possible…” (makes a very sad face).

This mini-drama shall, at its beginning, create suspense, because the user shall be intrigued to know Julie’s reasons. It shall after its resolution initiate some more intimate exchange, and the creation of some sort of social bounds between user and Julie.

user clicks more than once at a cloth. Additionally to the guiding behavior, Julie also initiates conversation themes, e.g. about a party it was at last night. This in-itiating follows time based heuristics, e.g. when the user is inactive for a certain time n. Short dialogue games are represented as directed graphs; when the user types something that does not match any of the conditions of the graph, the text input is send to the ALICE-engine, which provides a generic feedback.

Figure 64 – When chatting, the ALICE-Fallback Engine can be configured to employ certain data bases in a certain sequence, in order to generate the best possible response.

The single ALICE engine employed here can be configured with dedicated XEXRP-expressions, in order to allow for a controlled search of the chatting data bases (Figure 64). E.g. a greeting dialog game is modeled with directed graphs as a predictable sequence of Julie saying “hello”, and the user answering a typed

“hello”. If the user types in a question on the price of the visible cloth instead, Julie will be able to answer, because the text input is send to the ALICE data bases, and ALICE was configured to search the data bases in a sequence that prioritizes the data based on this particular cloth. Employing the event forwarding chain (cf.

4.2), both the directed graph and the Fallback Engine can be made to answer. For example, Julie could remark “Oh, you are not polite”, employing a transition of the directed graph that matches any text input other than “hello”, before responding with the price.

A st at e can det ermine t he chat -dat abases t o be employed, and t he sequence of invocat ion

Example: Search dat abase “ blue jacket ” , t hen “ clot hs” , t hen “ personal” , t hen “ generic”

Dat abases f or chat t ing

are in AIM L A st at e can det ermine t he chat -dat abases t o be employed, and t he sequence of invocat ion

Example: Search dat abase “ blue jacket ” , t hen “ clot hs” , t hen “ personal” , t hen “ generic”

Dat abases f or chat t ing are in AIM L

Figure 65 – Structure of the “beats” of a mini-drama. Each beat is organized as a compound of the hybrid framework. At the core of a beat are short dialogue games that can be modeled employing di-rected graphs, and which Julie initiates proactively. The sequence of the dialogue games, and the sequence of the beats, is controlled by “ad hoc”, experimental Sequencing Engines. Cf. [IurgelMar-cos06] for more details.

Following a strategy similar to that employed by Mateas and Stern (cf. [MateasS-tern06]), concerning their use of beats, “mini-dramas” of this project are encoded as compounds; each drama part that shall be played as a whole, without interrup-tions, is organized in a compound. For example, the announcement of Julie that it does not like the user, and a short conversation hereafter on the topic, until Julie’s refusal to continue dwelling on it, is a “beat” of a mini-drama, i.e. a compound. The initial, experimental structure consists of only three beats. The second and final beat-compound of the drama contains the revelation of the deep sympathy that Julie feels towards the user, and that lies behind the apparent repulsion of the first beat. A “rescue” beat is employed when the first beat is not successful, i.e., when

Julie: “I don't think that we are going to get along with each other“

Julie: „I do not want to tell“

Condition:

speechact (why)

Condition:

speechact (contradiction) First "beat“ of

mini-drama

Final "beat“ of mini-drama

Rescue "beat“ of mini-drama

the user does not react appropriately to the first attempt at dwelling on the theme of sympathy. The “rescue” beat is a second attempt to save the mini-drama. Fig-ure 65 shows an example of the beat structFig-ure.

Other than at Ask & Answer, where the user is expected to adapt to the limited faculties of the system and thus no generic, Eliza-style responses are allowed, in the context of Julie’s behavior modeling, a Fallback Engine is employed (Figure 66). This is because of the application design of a shopping site, where the user is not expected to spend much efforts trying to “understand” Julie.

Figure 66 – The project “Virtual Human with Social Intelligence” employs a fallback engine in order to guarantee a sensible response to unexpected text input.