The Bootstrap Dialog System is the key deliverable for the Texai project this year. Its use case is described this previous comment. Although this application could be written without fitting into an Albus Hierarchical Control System, I chose to do so because eventually that is the Texai architecture, and spending the extra effort now will avoid a subsequent rewrite and greatly facilitate system elaboration.
Here is a diagram of a generic Albus Hierarchical Constrol System. Click on the image for a full-sized version.

generic Albus Hierarchical Control System

Here is a diagram of the constituents of an Albus Node. Click on the image for a full-sized version.

diagram of the constituents of an Albus node

Here is a diagram of the Texai implmentation of an Albus Node. Click on the image for a full-sized version.
the Texai implementation of an Albus node

Here is a diagram of the bootstrap dialog system. Click on the image for a full-sized version.

bootstrap dialog system architecture

Key: cyan = Albus node, yellow = skill, grey = library (i.e. one or more Java objects)

These are the node descriptions:

linguistic knowledge acquisition node [top node at this stage of development]

mission

  • My mission is to acquire linguistic knowledge, both vocabulary and grammar rules. I sense user speech acts, which I execute. I report the result of the execution, and issue clarifying information and queries to the user according to my knowledge acquisition scripts.

sensations handled

  • user speech act

tasks commanded

  • generate text for the given response to the user

skills

  • vocabulary acquisition, using a library for knowedge base mapping
  • grammar acquisition

dialog session node

mission

  • My mission is to maintain a dialog session with each user. I sense English input text and end-of-message. I comprend the text and obtain the user speech act. I generate text for the given response semantics.

sensations handled

  • words and and end-of-message

sensations sent to parent

  • comprehended text and perceived user speech act

tasks handled

  • generate text for the given response to the user

tasks commanded

  • write output text to the user

skills

  • English comprehension skill, using libraries for incremental Fluid Construction Grammar rule application, semantic entailment (heuristic elaboration of the incremental discourse context with entailed knowledge), and spreading activation (incremental pruning the alternative semantic interpretations)
  • English generation skill, using libraries for discourse planning (search for the best combination of grammar rules to accept the given semantics and given discourse context), and for grammar rule application to generate each output word

Console chat session node

mission

  • My mission is to maintain a console chat session with the user at the development console. I detect input words and the end-of-message. I write given text to the console.

sensations handled

  • input text characters and line termination from the console

perceptions sent to parent

  • perceived words and and end-of-message

tasks handled

  • write words to the console
  • write end-of-message to the console

UI Console chat session node

mission

  • My mission is to maintain a GUI console chat session with the user at the development console, in the even that the command-line console is not available to my application. I detect input words, the end-of-message, and the exit-application event. I write given text to the console.

Behaviors of the GUI console chat session node are otherwise the same as the alternative console chat session node.

Use case

Let’s pretend that the Texai dialog system for lexical acquisition exists, and that the system is to learn constructions for examples provided by Ben Goertzel. The below dialog is Controlled English, in which the system understands and generates constrained syntax and vocabulary.

[user] Do you understand “The book is on neuroscience”?
[texai] Not entirely, neuroscience is not a physical location, how can the book be on it?
[user] The utterance means that the book is about neuroscience.
[texai] Could I generalize “on neuroscience” to any field of scientific discovery, such as “on Astronomy”, and mean that the book is about Astronomy?
[user] yes
[texai] Could I generalize field of scientific discovery to some general region, such “on deep space?”
[user] yes, this role can be generalized to any topic.
[texai] Does the utterance “the book is on Mars” entail either the interpretation that (1) the book is physically located on Mars, or (2) the book is about the topic Mars?
[user] yes
…
[user] Do you understand “the book is on fire?”
[texai] Yes, the book is about the topic fire.
[user] There is another, more common, interpretation: There is a fire in which the book is the thing that is burning.
[texai] Could I generalize fire to any decomposition process, such as rot?
[user] no
…
[user] Do you understand “the book is on my shit-list?”
[texai] Yes, the book is about the topic shit-list.
[user] There is another, more common, interpretation: There is a shit-list, and the book is an element of the list.
[texai] I know from Wiktionary that a shitlist is “a group of people who a person holds in disregard”, but a book is not a person.
[user] The elements of a shit-list can be things.
[texai] Now I understand that “the book is on my shit-list” commonly means that the book is an element of the group of things that you hold in disregard.