Executive Secretary In Every Computer 320
An anonymous reader writes "BusinessWeek Online just ran an interview with a researcher from Sandia National labs whose team has developed an alternative approach to artificial intelligence. They have come up with a software program that models a computer user's behavior and gives the user advice, corrects his errors or saves files according to the user's own logic. The idea is for computers to learn how to use with users -- instead of vice versa. The software has already been tested with air traffic controllers."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
What are you doing, Dave? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nighmare Scenario ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? Air traffic controllers!? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly comforting, if you ask me! I expect air traffic controllers to know their systems and how to use them. What happens when this software has learned to compensate for one traffic controller's particular errors, and then suddenly another traffic controller takes over his/her station?
zRe:I apparently already have this function.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Then MS marketing got involved. They decided that Clippy didnt get activated enough. Clippy in its research version might have popped up once a month when a user really needed help. However, once a month would not justify the expense of development and marketing, nor could it be hailed as a great new feature if the users almost never saw it.
Enter the new and marketing improved Clippy any MS office user over the last decade has had the misfortune to experience. Junk the I part of AI, and just make an annoying paperclip instead of a helpful tool. I can only imagine how the researchers felt about having their nice idea turned into something like what Clippy got to be.
Maybe we'll see a real implementation of this kind of technology at some point in time. But I'll bet any commercial application of this is more likely to get written by popup ad companies, and jog the ATC guys elbow by suggesting which airline he should be using or something...
Oliver: the new Nomenclator (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember oliver, the electronic personality extender predicted by Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock"
There's an interesting passage about olivers in John Brunner's excellent novel, "The Shockwave Rider":
"... so-called olivers, electronic alter-egos designed to save the owner the strain of worrying about all his person-to-person contacts. A sort of twenty-first-century counterpart to the ancient Roman nomenclator, who discreetly whispered data into the ear of the emperor and endowed him with the reputation of a phenomenal memory." (pp. 41-42)
a few aspects (Score:3, Interesting)
And to focus on another problem: if this thing learns about you behavior, don't you mind about your privacy? We are all paranoid about cookies and other spyware, and then some people actually want us to deliberatly install it? Just imagine: Your boss next to you because you want to show something to him and then the computer asks: "Hi XY, you haven't visited
Re:I apparently already have this function.... (Score:3, Interesting)
What would really be useful is an OS where everything is controlled through scripts I write myself. Applications, through the OS, would be controlled by scripting, too. Then I can tell the computer how I want it to act, instead of it having to learn what I'll probably want, then guess at it.
It scares me that this sort of software is needed for air traffic controllers. Those guys should know the software they're using inside and out, frontwards and backwards. I expect an ATC to be able to fix any problems with the computer (even though the better solution is to move the ATC to another machine and have a tech come in and repair). The stupidity of the average computer user is infecting all levels of software design
Fun parts... (Score:3, Interesting)
From the Article (Score:3, Interesting)
"some fear that the concept suggests an ominous encroachment out of a sci-fi movie. Cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe, who leads the Sandia team, insists that the machines are designed to augment -- not replace -- human activity.
This sort of writing is the result of either a sensational and poorly informed writer, or a company hyping its product way beyond its capabilities. AI has not even reached the Bronze Age yet, and the idea that a concept like this threatens to make humans obsolete is laughable.
Re:air traffic controllers? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to be able to quickly find items that I need that were saved years ago. Almost every day I have to find such things on my disk, and having a searchable interface (particularly for binary encoded files, such as executable or graphics files - which have little searchable text inside of them) that works would save hours every week.
Instead of only having a limited amount of information, filename and directory, you would be able to search over multiple hierarchies as well as descriptive text - even for binaries. This would put the user in the driver's seat, allowing her to build relationships within the data that have meaning to her.
Why can't computers just do what I tell them? (Score:5, Interesting)
I want my computers to present me with clear and unambiguous output. In return, I will give them as much unambiguous input needed to get the job done. Save the "clever" AI for Doom 3 and let me get back to work.
Re:think lewinsky (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I apparently already have this function.... (Score:2, Interesting)
MS has been trying to add "helpful features that learn to adapt to how the user works" for years, clippy being the most notorious example. I hate them all. Many times my colleagues have heard me yell at some office program, "don't be so damn helpful!" I really don't want everything I type that has an atmark in it turned into a clickable email link.
This company will likely be purchased by MS shortly, and their overhelpful time wasters incorporated into the operating system (along with a few egregious security holes, of course). And once that happens, my first question to MS tech support will be, "how do I turn this useless feature off." Shortly after win2k machines started becoming common in my office, a "how to turn off personalized menus" FAQ became very popular."
Whyizzit smart people are wasting time and money on projects like these? Computers should behave like Forest Gump, and do "whatever the hell it is I tell them to" and no more.
Re:Scary ... (Score:4, Interesting)
The examples I believe were the current Palm OS with its logical if somewhat odd "grafitti" system. It was compared to the old Newtons which attempted to learn the user's handwriting, as well as the new tablet pc's.
Basically the long and short of it was that the order of % correctness went newton > tablet > palm. Although the tablet pc's do a pretty good job interpreting, they still "make mistakes" when someone's writing gets really sloppy. On the other hand after a minimum of time the average user can use graffiti with a high level of accuracy and can understand the malformations of a sigil that might produce an error while being made.
All in all though it seems most of these attempts to "learn" what a user may do are misplaced. I try to keep my "websites" directory very well organized, as well as my "print work" directory, but both vary in structure from each other, even before my own mistakes and idiosyncratic files. And my applications directory is a completely different story... and lets not even get started on consumer media. Shouldn't this all be handled by XML soon anyway?
We've still got the world's best massively parellel computers in our noggins. Pattern recognition OWNZ.
Not new. (Score:5, Interesting)
You could also direct it by voice command. I had this program back in the day, heady stuff at the time.
Here's a pile of other stuff on Software Assistants. [nec.com]
Re:I apparently already have this function.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why can't computers just do what I tell them? (Score:1, Interesting)
Now, go ahead, use all the predictive marketing tools at your disposal and predict what I'm going to do/buy next. You can't, there is no way you can ever guess with accuracy.
Clippy, or zippy AI, all of it is useless and annoying. I'll do something different just to spite them. Anything which aims to be predictive is doomed to failure and a bad idea.
More crap... (Score:1, Interesting)
Really, this is similar to adding another abstraction layer into software...another source of error, except in this example...its definitely prone to error...causing myself and countless other admins/software engineers lots and lots of headaches.
Rather than working to make computers use with the users...which is ass-backwards, creating all sorts of nasty problems IMO...how about we make users learn to use the technology properly...like it should be?
I should also note that there are several bottlenecks with implementing this accross all software, since all software works in different ways...that means each developer will have to write this 'AI' crap into it...I don't know about other developers..but I say hell no to more cruft.
Humans are not predictable enough in their habits for something like this to work...even the same person changes their habits over time...which will make keeping up with what data is where even more difficult.
Thanks but....I think I'll pass on this one.
Re:I apparently already have this function.... (Score:5, Interesting)
An alternative approach would be to first parse Slashdot archives to get a lot of posts, articles and moderation data and then use Bayesian theory to decide which sentences/keywords should be included to produce highest moderation based on the words in the blurb (or the linked article, but parsing that would be against
It can be further enhanced using the poetry evolution [slashdot.org] engine. If we limit the system to very short posts (cliche jokes or smartass oneliners), it might work quite well (feedback, of course, would be the moderation).
Any volunteers?
Re:From the Article (Score:3, Interesting)
Robots have replaced workers in factories.
Dictation programs have replaced secreataries and typists.
Tools like Google, SQL and mapping software do a better job of researching information than people do.
Machines perform very well in tasks where we boss them around. They don't perform equally well when they have to perform a lot of decision making. This is an attempt to bring them to a more passable level. And since technology is always replacing people, I think designing technology with the vision of augmenting a person's computer usage is very noble. And it's something that's very important to point out when we've got doom and gloom pundits everywhere.