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Comment by Mattasher | Hacker News Reader

Interesting project. Though the sample conversations in the picture read like what someone thinks a human would sounds like in conversation. Or like those snippets you get in a language learning module:

>[Abigail]: Hey Klaus, mind if I join you for coffee?

>[Klaus]: Not at all, Abigail. How are you?

>[John]: Hey, have you heard anything about the upcoming mayoral election?

>[Tom]: No, not really. Do you know who is running?

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Or expository dialog in a movie. For example, most people have context in the real world when you say “any news on the election?” - “the election” is going to have local or national significance enough that “upcoming” is unnecessary (there would be news about the outcome, dates are known in advance, etc.) and “mayoral” might be kind of helping (I don’t mean city council or county commissioners) but I have never heard anyone use the term outside The Media. But this is exactly the kind of dialogue I expect from on-screen characters at the start of a movie or episode.

> For example, most people have context in the real world when you say “any news on the election?”

There was a quote (I thought from Hacker News but can't find it) that went something like this:

"As an engineer, I've always imagined that working in sales is something like this:

- you are on the golf course with a client

- someone says 'hey, did you guys see the game last night?'

- somehow, everyone magically knows what game you are talking about!"

If they are trained on a corpus of text it seems likely they got far more antiquated and/or stilted written dialog in that sample than they did transcribed modern conversations.

I'd be curious how it handles something like:

[A] Not so good. I lost my mom last week.

There are any numbers of ways robo-Klaus might respond to that in a completely inappropriate way.

Have you tried looking in the sofa? I found some change I had lost last week.

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