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What AI Elements Could Improve the Web?
DavidpFitz asks: "I'm entering my final year of my Artificial Intellgience/Computer Science degree at Birmingham Uni. (UK). The trouble is that I can't decide what to do for my final project. I'd like to do something of practical value delivered over the web (things like an intelligent Slashdot filter spring to mind :-), but I always come up with reasons against everything I think of. Can anybody think of ways they would like a web site to react more intelligently that they currently do. Clever shopping carts? More targeted news? Both of these are rubbish, I think - so more interesting and complex ideas are welcome! The main thing, is that it has to have a strong AI element in it, not just appearing to be clever."
Interesting thought. So if we were to apply more AI to the web, what areas should we target? And I feel this is a valid question even if someone may be using these ideas for their school project. These are still just that: ideas. DavidpFitz will have to finish and implement his final project regardless of anything said in this forum, so why not take his line of reasoning, brainstorm a bit and have some fun with it?
The problems of the web that can have AI-type solutions are generally semiotic in nature. We could have intelligent agents, able to pay our bills and do our shopping for us, if we had a system of symbols that mapped clearly and unambiguously to meanings, or, a non-symbol processing system able to decode the web the way a human does. Most likely, we'll get something midway between them.
:^P
The GOFAI idea that human cognition is a matter of disembodied symbol processing is dead, and good riddance. However, our computers remain most useful as symbol processing engines, not as the more complex kinds of massively parralel connection engines that most people think brains are. We can get computers to emulate that kind of brain functionality, but only on a very limited scale compared to the human mind. Human-equal parralel machines are not just around the corner, so we have to augment the connectionist systems we have with symbol processing facilities.
The kind of project that interests me is a system that uses XML formats to provide clear semantics on the web, and connectionist methods to make judgements about how to act in response to those symbols. A system, for instance, that can scan an XML resource for information about rock concerts or movie listings, and having learned in more connectionist ways the preferences of the user (both in terms of costs, scheduling and personal taste) can inform them of events they might like to see, perhaps even going so far as to make tentative reservations when it's very confident.
The same kind of system could be used to solve library research problems. An XML document structures data semantically enough that a connectionist system can make quick, fairly superficial judgements about the contents and how they relate to the research needs of its users. It can then do more indepth readings of the highest confidence documents, leading to better sources and new documents. In the end, it can provide the documents to users and assist them when there are gaps in their knowledge by pointing them to the document that fills the gap.
The killer ap for AI would be automatic translation. Since that's my field, I don't think it's somewhere you ought to go without a strong knowledge of linguistics, and of the past failures in the field. I have some ideas, but that's what my PhD is going to be about.
"UI AI" is, IMHO, an ill-concieved idea that has had way too much work done on it in the past decade. The problem is very simple: if I spend a few minutes (or hours, or days,) learning a new interface, I want it to stay the same! I don't care if I never run "Backup", or if I visit Slashdot so much that it may as well be my home page... I don't want those settings changing unless I tell them to.
MS Office is a notorious example of this. In the newer versions, if you don't use a menu item frequently, it vanishes, so users aren't "confused" by too many options. I used to work tech support, and believe me, having your menus change for no reason is far more confusing than having "too many options"... and it is frustrating to new users and experienced users alike.
MSK
The web is growing every day with more and more content that is dynamically generated. What we need is something that will at least give search engines a grasp of what's buried under all of that.
Sure, many sites with dynamic content provide an engine that will allow THEIR dynamic content to be searched, but that doesn't help if you're using a major search engine to find ALL the sites with relevant information, not just relevant information on ONE site. We need a way for the engines that search dynamic content to report back to the big search engines what they have in their databases.
And then we can deal with all the security and privacy issues that will probably come with it.
The entire point of the Internet is to relay information. Information must, by definition, be meaningful to its recipient.
I'm sure you all remember the study done a year or so ago reporting that even the best search engines hit only 16% or so of the sites that are actually on the web. Clearly, there is a need for a good AI agent to look for information relating to a query and present that information to its client. Ideally, the client would be able to ask a question like, "Who was the fourth Pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty?" and receive a weighted list of answers (e.g. 85% of sites consulted say it was Seti I).
The data is there. What we need is the means to collect it and turn it into information.
www.alarmist.org
What about an AI that takes a given pool of data (e.g.current news headlines, a collection of images, etc) and creates an electronic image *inspired* by these. I don't mean a random mishmash of whatever it was handed, but rather, identifies some underlying theme in the data and interprets it in an artistic fashion... ok, maybe it's weird or impossible, but I thought it would be cool... probably fairly challenging too.
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I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Web-controlled nuclear-powered death bots.
But you'd better invest in a good server b/c the site would see a lot of traffic. Well, until enough people had used the death bots anyway.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
There needs to be a real push into getting intelligence in educational software (for kids). Most of what I've seen is drek - while some of it is very slick and good-looking, it lacks real educational content. You either do not learn anything, or you learn it once and then repeat it endlessly.
Here's a challenge for your AI - adaptive educational software. Most software today requires the child to 'log in' so it can keep track of their saved games. Go further. Keep track of what the child does, how successful they are, and tailor the next experience accordingly.
Give rewards for progress. Reduce the rewards for continued success at the same level (gradually). Prod them into more difficult problems / puzzles / challenges. Eventually remove the lower, introductory, levels all together. Give different rewards.
Do all this while keeping it fun, and keeping them coming back for more. Pop quizes to keep them sharp - reward those accordingly. More advanced information (kind of like sidebars), when they are ready for it, can appear as options. Almost a tutor / friend relationship.
Teach the young how to learn - what could be more challenging for an AI project?