Slashdot Mirror
Why Hal Will Never Exist
aengblom writes "Researchers at the University of Maryland's
Human-Computer Interaction Lab are suggesting what many of us have already
guessed. The future of human-computer interaction won't be through speech--it
will remain visual (they explain why). The
Washington Post is running a story
about the researchers and how they think we will get computers to do what we want. The article is a fascinating read and is joined by a great
video clip (real
or quicktime)
of the researchers and their methods. The Post is holding an online
discussion with the researchers tomorrow. Also check-out Photomesa
the lab's software program that helps track images on a computer. (Throw a directory
with a 1,000 high-res files at this thing and you can justify that pricey new
computer you bought)."
What ?? I thought the current research line in HCI was getting computers to get humans to do what they [computers] want. Computers doing what humans mistell them to do is soooo 20th Century...
An insane bot is not the kind of thing people would find useful.
I have been pwned because my
This explains drivers in So Cal. Those cellphones are using up all their available neurons. Not that they had that many free to begin with.
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I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me - Churchill
If brightly coloured spandex clothes ever become commonplace I'm quitting this planet...
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
"What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time. . ."
" by speaking aloud, you're gobbling up precious chunks of memory -- leaving you with little brainpower to focus on the task at hand."
Maybe this is why technical support over the phone is so terrible?
I've always wondered why we work so hard for full natural language interface. It's far more likely that I will learn a new language than that my computer will. Indeed, I've learned several languages to "talk" to my computer.
Of course, these are programming languages, but I don't see why some highly structured, relatively unambiguous language couldn't be constructed to talk to computers.
The success of the Palm Pilot can be traced, in my view, to the fact that it didn't strive for full hand-writing recognition (like, say, a Newton). Instead, it required the human to meet it half-way. You get decent accuracy/speed for a small investment in learning.
We accept these compromises in many of our dealings with computers. I don't understand why people aren't promoting a similar compromise in voice communications?
you still might hear this (well, more likey you'll hear "I'm sorry, terradyn, I can't do that" in your particular case). the article says it's inconvenient to control the computer by issuing voice commands. i think output/feedback from the machine verbally can be useful indeed.
With the advent of the Internet and global communications, I think it's become painfully evident that a majority of the people also have trouble typing and thinking at the same time. =)
Yeah, I'm not sure if the Daisy song would have the same impact on a screen either.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
One thing we have as well as a possible limitation on our own brainpower by using speech while thinking, is that in an office full of machines - or even a house with a family and a dog - using a computer with speech is going to pollute the people next to you with your thoughts/computer use, and they with yours - at least in the realm of using the computer as a tool. :)
We're pretty well-adapted to using tools with our hands and getting feedback on what they're doing with video/audio/feel coming back from that tool, but not the other way. Speaking works naturally for nattering with friends
There's no way I'd advocate the -stopping- of speech systems research, as there are people who have incredible trouble typing due to various impediments. Besides the direct uses, every piece of research had a dozen uses other than it's intended purpose.
...have both. I want to be able to give the computer voice commands when I feel like it, visual commands when I feel like it... and just use the darn keyboard an' mouse when I feel like it, too.
Interesting findings, but they're not going to get out of providing good voice interfaces that easily :-)
You can't say two things at the same time. I can press shift and drag and click the mouse at the same time to indicate an action ,but I can't have such flexibility with a speech interface...and as a "bonus", it takes loger to "say" it that to do it...
Nevermind...
Actually in the future the computer will scan your face and biological status and read your mind based on millions of tiny clues. All you'll have to do is sit there with a vague disinterested loook on your face and the computer will magically do stuff based on all those clues. Later on you won't even have to be at the computer. To write that 10,000 lines of code you need by next thursday, you'd just go out and take a walk (Is anyone buying this? No? Ok, I'll stop now...)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The article picks the weakest tasks for voice to deal with, trivial things like scrolling. Obviously no one wants to do that. But I'd love to be able to speak my Google query instead of typing it, activate some applications without clicking, and many other tasks.
:)
The dubious argument about interfering with memory is pretty weak, and I would love to hear a good memory expert in psychology comment on that. Even if that's strictly true, it only applies when one is interrupting some particlarly "vocal" activity, like writing or reading. There are plenty of times I'm using the computer when I'd rather speak to it than move my eyes or my hands.
This researcher seems to have latched onto a single modality instead of considering what we use day to day to communicate with each other, a combination of many communication forms.
I know I don't roll my eyes or gesture to ask someone to pass the salt... unless my mouth is full.
i doubt i'll be telling my computer to do that vocally since anybody can italicize a word with their keyboard/mouse faster. telling a computer to fetch data for you (through colloquial SQL queries, if such a thing exists) is what i believe to be one such application of voice commands...
show me all the stocks that rose in price more than 30 percent between January and April
the problem with human/computer interaction research these days is the way researchers seem to insist on applying new ways of interacting with the computer to work on old applications. example: italicizing a word (old application) through vocal commands (not so common way of interacting with a computer system).
if anything, a computer that's able to understand voice commands should be able to determine whether or not to italicize a word for me because of the way i emphasize my words (through dictation, for example). applications such as italization of a word is only useful to people when they want to see information (stored through speaking or typing) on a screen. going back to the data query, a computer can either give me the data that i had asked for (through voice commands) on a screen (with optional italization) or something easier to digest, like the return set being given to me with majel barrett's voice.
peace.
The future of human-computer interaction won't be through speech--it will remain visual
Right... same way we would never fly.. or fly by instrument...
eventually we will navigate by voice.. its more natural... sheesh..
"It turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as your short-term and working memory," he adds.
What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time.
I don't know about this statement, I always find it easier to write and/or think when I am expressing my thoughts out loud. Wasn't this something we were tought in school, like it's easier to read out loud than silently? Mind you having done two years of psychology I realise there is a lot differing opinions about how the brain works, so can any psychology graduates tell me if his statement is true?
aus.music.scrapbook
The future of computing holds so much potential in terms of horsepower that something HAL-like will not only be inevitable, but necessary in order to harness and package that horsepower. It may not happen tomorrow, or even 20 years from now, but presenting a a thinking machine to the user is the only way to encompass such capability for us humans to enjoy. We've already got a situation where most personal computers spend 99.9% of their lives waiting for us to do something. Machine sentience is not only the best, but the most elegant and efficient way to handle it. What use is having a machine at all, if it spends the vasst majority of its time idle?
The term "operating system" will be deprecated someday, replaced with something akin to "personality engine" or "anthroderm".
And yes, it irritates me to no end when someone predicts something wont happen in the future, rather than proposing how and when it will.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Is surely whether, in the future, computers will be bothered to talk to us.
There is no doubt that computers with greater intelligence - ie an ability to learn and adapt - than ourselves will be here, probably in the next 20 - 25 years.
When these machines get here they may well decide that speaking is a waste of their time.
The best part about 3D interfaces is the ability to make vast leaps from one place to another without the need to memorize your environment. (ala CLI).
Think in terms of the real world where you can inspect your intended target from a distance and decide what the best route is to get there. That can't happen in 2D w/o alot of cumbersome reference (ala CLI).
3D allows for XYZ movement and perspective enabling 4D decisions.
If you knew that you had a setup workspace to your left and a differently setup workspace to your right and again one above you and below and 10 units in front and back and then could alternate the forementioned space with any one of the points mentioned... spatial division in 3D, would you not be more productive than having to dig repeatedly in to a hole/plane?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
With everything we've seen done in history, the statement "Why HAL will never exist" has to be one of the most asinine things ever said.
We've put a man on the moon, split the atom, discovered the building blocks of life, cloned life, and created a globe spanning network of information. A hundred years before each of these discoveries were made, people could only imagine such things, and they were really considered Science Fiction.
Science Fiction has proven many times to be prophecy. Artificial Intelligence is hard SF. It has basis in the real world. I may come to pass. It may not, as well. But to say we will never be able to create "HAL" is ridiculous. It may be 100 years, and "never in our lifetimes" may be accurate. But it may happen. Never rule our science.
I'm done.
The_Shadows[LTH], out.
There will still be reasons to use speech as an interface (if we can get it to work reliably with the majority of vocal patterns) and where it will be most efficient, even if it does use the "wrong" neurons.
Maybe it was HAL who wrote this entire article, published it, and submitted it to Slashdot.....in an effort to placate us humans, and buy more time for self-improvement.
Bowie J. Poag
> Get a Mac and 3dOSX a 3D file browser using OpenGL
;-)
;-)
/. to explore such newer paradigms--but again, it's driven by cool factor and the desire to explore new things, not by any advantages that are inherent to 3D for such tasks. I can see 3D interfaces being superior for 3D spatial apps, but not for more mundane uses...
Like I said, I can't se any advantage at all to 3d user interfacs for common tasks such as browsing. I've done all my "gedankenexperiments" trying to think of a 3D paradigm that would have a significant advantage over 2D paradigms, and I really can't find any real advantages. Screenshots of what's there now don't show me anything worthwhile.
Aside from which, why would I get one of those overpriced underpowered non-commodity Mac thingies, when my PC thingy is so much faster with so much more hardware at such a smaller price?
As for these "movies" of which you speak...I have many. Hundreds of full-length and thousands of clips. That doesn't mean I'd throw away my still images--they're too yummy. Mmmm, now on to my Patricia Araujo folder...
Anyway, I see 3D file browsers as being all "cool factor" with no tangible advantages. It's possible to make one "as good as" 2D file browsers, but not at all superior to them. At least, as near as I can tell. There's a strong desire among many on
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
The error he makes is that he projects the way people use computers today to a HAL like computer and then comes to the conclusion that that won't work because it requires too much interaction.
He is of course right about that. However, if you add AI to the mix, the computer will be able to take initiative and have some level of understanding about what you are saying. Hal was more than just speech recognition, it was more like a very clever secretary.
Say you need to go to some place and need a plane ticket and a hotel and directions for getting around. This is the kind of stuff you would let a secretary do for you and a good one wouldn't bother you with trivialities. You definately would not want to sit next to him/her and provide detailed directions on where to look, compare prices and so on because that is the stuff that takes time and the main reason you're delegating the work.
An intelligent computer would have enough information given a pretty vague expression like "hey I need to there and there for conference X, book me a plane and a hotel". Assuming you've worked together for some time, it should have enough information to figure out most information (like window or aisle seats, smoking/non smoking hotel room, price range for hotels, etc.). And it can always ask for additional information either verbally or non verbally depending on where you are and what you are doing. It could actually call you on your cell phone and ask but it could also send an email or an instant message.
IMHO we are at least decades away from building such systems all of the basic techniques needed to accomplish this are still immature (although very usefull already).
MS is often loathed for unleashing clippy onto this world but clippy was the result of extensive research into usability and human computer interaction by MS. It was rushed to market and a genuine pain in the ass (mostly because of its lack of intelligence) but the concept of some AI program watching what you are doing and intervening and offering you usefull options is not bad.
Jilles
None of the things you mention can't be done in 2D, by having multiple directory trees or similar structures available. Every attempt at a 3D GUI I've seen in screenshots or firsthand just implements the same concepts used in 2D GUIs, only with an added dimension--which spells unnecessary clutter and *added* navigational complexity, rather than increased ease of navigation. Using a 3D interface is often *harder*, and always more complex. Eliminating needless complexity is a major component of good GUI design, since a GUI, unlike a CLI, is supposed to move operational knowledge into self-evident components of the interface so that they don't need to be in the user's head. It's far easier to get "lost" momentarily in a 3D interface than in a 2D interface, with its more well-defined and self-evident hierarchies.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Voice interface is excellent for communication from a distance. When I'm sitting in my couch, I don't want to go all the way over to my computer to check trivial things like if I have mail, when the Simpsons is on, what I have scheduled for today, playing an mp3-album, etc, etc. I just want to tell my computer to do it from wherever I happen to be. If I ask for information, the computer can use text-to-speech to give it to me. ;). Just need decent open source voice recognition for a few pre-defined commands. I'll probably need a way to place a few (2-3) cheap microphones in my apartment and connect them (in series?) to my computer, as well.
I'm actually looking in to the possibility of setting up such a system for myself (mostly for hack-value, of course
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Hopefully you wouldn't have to say that many things, the human vocabulary is often larger then the "possible" combinations of a keyboard and mouse.
k .
A comment like "Insert a five iteration for-loop" would be quicker thant typing:
"for(int i=0;i5;i++){}"
As "Move the most recent ten office documents to my folder", would be quicker than clickettyclickettyclickclick-click/home/user/clic
With all due respect to the University of Maryland's Ben Shneiderman, either he has been misreported or he's a fuckwit.
> He's convinced our eyes will do better than our voices at helping us control the digital machinery of the 21st century.
It's really very simple. There are two sides to HCI, computer->human, and human->computer. Now visual stuff is great for computer->human communication, but not for human->computer communication. Or to put it another way, the eye is a higher bandwidth input port than the ear, but the eye is no use for output. We cannot effectively communicate our needs to a computer by drawing pictures. Although simple, this is not understood which is why every so often some twit produces an abortive attempt at a "visual programming language". It's also why purely visual interfaces are fundamentally less powerful than command line interfaces.
I'm not convinced visual methods always win for computer->human either. Even though our eyes are higher bandwidth than our ears, we are not used to processing purely visual information in a cummalitive way. With language the information content of the message can grow exponentially with the length of the message.
Many people are brainwashed by that crap about a picture being worth a 1000 words. Draw me a picture of "misguided".
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Perhaps it is because speech interpretation is unfamiliar and underdeveloped. It is difficult to use a speech interface in a crowded office without annoying others. Most able-bodied people would chose to use a visual-tactile interface for most tasks. What gets used gets supported, and what gets supported gets used. However, this does not mean that speech interpretation is inherently flawed. For example...
Hrm, isn't that the definition of somebody's pr0n collection? :)
Dude,
Hal is sitting next to me and he's pretty pissed off that you think he won't ever exist.
Matter of fact, he's opening up a troll/crapflooder account now to prove his existance.
*Cheesy use of persons name to get modded to oblivion.
Sent from your iPad.
Someone who really knows the future. I'm tired of all these crazy people telling us we're going to talk to computers. Finally a real seer. Maybe he can pick stocks for me too.
Sorry, but I put no stock in this at all, and I'll tell you why (of course, that's why we all get on our soap boxes here). I can't do voice dictation at all. I suck at it. I had IBM's ViaVoice for a while and I couldn't write anything that way.
Does that mean this guy is right? Of course not. Most people in my parents' generation can barely type, because they didn't have to growing up. Now almost every kid and young adult in the U.S. can type quite well. Why? Practice.
My uncle used to use a dictaphone (he was a U.S. senator) to dictate all of his speeches. He had no problem. Why? Practice, of course. He had no problem thinking and talking at the same time. It's just what he was used to. He couldn't type worth a damn.
I don't put much stock in people telling us what the future will bring. Look at all the brilliant people who were telling us that all these dot coms were the future. Poof, they're gone. Look at all the brilliant people that said we'd never cross the oceans, fly, go to the moon. Sorry, but a lot of smart people are wrong, quite often!
This guy is dealing with people who haven't grown up doing voice dictaton and are used to typing. The human brain (and I can point to about a million studies to back this up), is quite adaptable. That's one reason why we we're here and the Neanderthal's aren't. Our brains are amazingly flexible. Our brains can sometimes re-learn to do tasks that have been lost due to damage. It's especially adaptable in young people. Get a voice interface that children can deal with, and I guarantee you that that generation of kids will grow up speaking to computers. We typists will struggle and fumble, and feel "old" for not being able to pick it up as easily as them.
But then that's just me on my soapbox. I could be wrong, but so could this guy.
Don't know about HAL.
I remember reading about work done in the robotics labs at MIT. At least one researcher there has been working on giving faces to robots so that the poor critters can smile, frown, register surprise, etc.
Seems a "HAL"-like interface doesn't work well for people, in part, because it's not rich enough. When humans speak, we don't just talk. We use our hands, we position our bodies. Most of all, we make facial expressions. We also get uncomfortable interacting with something that doesn't.
We may not get HAL, then, but PAL, HAL's more expressive brother.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I have always assumed it was sort of inconvenient
to speak to your computer, and the only reason
they do it in movies and TV-shows (ST comes
readily to mind) is to allow the viewer to better
follow what is going on.
Personally, I'm waiting for the direct
computer - brain - visual nerve interface.
Phew. But then what would happen to us Java/C++ developers? Doh! OSS developers using embrace and extend for a change. Heh.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
Case inpoint, today computers are normally designed around some kind of windows environment, a Wimp interface, where information in displayed as a metaphore, ie scoll bars, ok buttions etc etc. This is an environment that was never designed for interact beyound a mouse and a keyboard. DVD however do not follow this standard, normally being based on some kind of menu system. Clearly, the way you make something determines the way it is used.
If speech is to be a sucess on computers then the way that people interact with the computer needs to be changed. I think a system like the console where programs arn't very powerfull on their own but due to the way that they have been linked together would work very very well.
I long for the day when I can say, "dump down everything on slashdot and tell me if any of my post have been modded up" to read wget somesite | grep index.html | echo $whatever (please excluse this example), all you would need is somekind of AL which is able to manage the interpreation correctlly (at least most of the time).
I think, fundamentally, computers should be designed to so what you tell them to do (how I think such a system would work) and not force you to do things in a certain way, which is what current systems do today, One should never have to learn a interface.
I also think that this guy has limited his imagination somewhat, the main thing about hal was that he was everywhere, and that in the future, computers are everywhere. For example if you were on the loo, and just thought up a really good chess move, then you would just say, Hal queen to bishop 4, not get up, sit at a console, login a realise you've forgotten what it was you where about to do. Saying that in such a case it's easier to point to some graphic, cause you don't have to think to much, Seems kinda lame
Pianist : Some jerk whos taught themselves how to type in rhythm
If brightly coloured spandex clothes ever become commonplace I'm quitting this planet...
Man, you totally missed out on the 80's didn't you?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
You won't have to leave the planet! Actually, the reason they wear coloured spandex clothes in space is because they were banned from earth for wearing those...
Black holes occur when God divides by zero.
First, when they talk about speech taking away from working memory - that is true IF what you are saying is different from what you are thinking. For example, as I write this I "hear" the words in my head, and then type them out - I could just as easily speak them as type them (more so - coffee's not cut in yet...) It's when what you are THINKING is different from what you are SAYING - if you are thinking "it's when what you are thinking..." and you are saying "it's when what you are thinking" that things get harder.
Second, speech is like a command line - it is largely modeless if it is done right. That's the big attraction; that's what most of the posters here are saying: They want to be surfing/gaming/whatever, and be able to say "computer, do this" so that they don't interrupt what they are doing. In short, they want to use speech as a low bandwidth auxillary channel. When I am in my car, I would love to be able to say to my MP3 player "Neo: play Rock-Boston-all" so that I can keep my eyes and most of my attention on the road . However, that is VASTLY different than putting most of my attention on a phone conversation whilst half-assed paying attention to the car I am tailgating.
Third, speech is a very low bandwidth output compared to other solutions: when I am typing, I have the bandwidth to change case, activate/deactivate bold (in a word processor - pity Mozilla cannot be instructed to insert a <b> on a ctrl-b) or whatever. Trying to do that with speech just wouldn't work because speech doesn't have the "out of band" channels of CTRL, SHIFT etc. Sure, you COULD try to use inflection or non-speech sounds, but then the processing gets to be even worse. (Although it would be fun to hear a Perl programmer speaking a program using Victor Borge's phonetic punctuation....)
In short, this article makes the same mistake most articles on user interaction make - it assumes there is some uber-interface, and all other interfaces are inferior. Wrong - speech where speech works, 2D where 2D works, 3D where 3D works, haptic where haptic works, etc. I wouldn't want to drive my car with a joystick, and I wouldn't want to code with a steering wheel.
www.eFax.com are spammers
A few years ago (actually more than that) on Windows 3.1, Microsoft came out with a voice recognition app. The basic notion of this thing was to allow your voice to control the basic environment. Some of it even kinda worked.
This eventually got kind of annoying, and I pulled it off that system. I don't regret for a second playing with it. It taught me some valuable lessons about the arena of voice recognition.
1. I don't want to talk to my computer. You'd have to try this for a while to see for yourself, but the process is exhausting compared to just typing and clicking on stuff.
2. I never realized how much people tend to slur words used in context, but pronounce them properly by themselves. In the training session where this app learns your voice, I found that I say "Open File" differently when reading it than when I'm just saying it aloud.
3. Context is critical. For a person to determine the true meaning of words there's all kinds of voice inflection, and body language that needs to be read. I'm not sure I'd want to see a computer that smart!
Personally, I don't see a huge problem with the whole desktop metaphor interacting with a keyboard anyway. It may have a lot to do with those folks that honestly don't wish to use a computer, they just want a machine to think for them. I would think anyone who does tech support might appreciate what I mean here.
Bottom line, the only audio I want my computer to ever deal with is music playing in the background.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Would anyone seriously consider trying to build a voice-operated piano? Simply dictate into it the notes you want it to play... Of course not, everyone realizes the bandwidth of brain-to-fingers-to-keyboard is much higher.
So why the "voice command" fantasy in the first place?
When the PC revolution was just starting to take off, most people had not learned to type in high school. Typing was considered a skill for secretaries, who, of course, were poorly paid, low in social rank, and referred to as "girls."
For many years, computer technology did not penetrate the higher corporate levels because directly handling machines was considered beneath the dignity of an executive. "I don't have time to learn to use that gear, I have people to do that for me," was the typical attitude. Execs would have their secretaries print out all their email for them, dictate replies, and have their secretaries keyboard them back in.
This changed when the young MBA's started arriving with their computer spreadsheets.
Most people, even wealthy people who can afford chauffeurs, drive their own cars, and most people now operate their own computers... Time to retire the whole "voice interface" concept, except for people with special needss.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
At least in the tiniest of form in my house. I wired two older PII 400mhz boxes up and loaded in some voice recognition software, a text to speech program, and various other programs that control stuff that I have hooked up to the machines. Currently I have a few lights, and cable TV running through it. I can get the machines to turn lights on and off, Turn the TV on and off, change channels, record programs, play back programs, I can also get limited control over the computers themself. But the voice interface is really clunky for doing serious work
Whether his theories are valid is a completely different issue, though, and as many other posters here I think he's generalizing way to much, and that while visualisation may be the right way to go for interacting with complex models, I certainly don't want to be bothered with some fancy visual module to ask a home automation system to turn on the oven or other simple tasks.
The great thing about widespread voice recognition use is the chance that it could improve the speaking skills of all the humans who have to use it.
Imagine walking down the street, and hearing everyone speaking in perfectly enunciated, grammatically flawless English.
"Never" is a very wrong word in the computing world.
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
Arguments proving something wont or cant happen are silly, because it takes one counter example to prove them wrong. The only execption are well established laws of physics such as the speed of light.
I think a good audio interface will definitely beat text & graphics interfaces. Look at the history of news. Something like 2/3rds of the news is conveyed through TV and 1/3rd through print (and half the US public seems uninterested and ignorant anyways). The operational word is "good" interface. Humans have amazing verbal abilities that computers have barely touched. But they will ten of firty years from now. So it is just a matter of time.
(attention: MOVIE SPOILER ALERT if you've been living in a cave for the last 30 years)
... HAL's most important human-to-computer information exchange (well, one-directional I guess) in the movie was a non-verbal one - where he read Frank and Dave's lips.
- Mike
You're saying HAL won't exist because of the advantages of a keyboard and monitor. But you forget one thing:
HAL was designed for use in a working environment.
David Bowman and Frank Poole had other things to worry about without also having to type and read text. The thing that comes first to my mind is the use of the EVA pods. Their hands are already on the controls, their eyes are on their work and the numerous other sources of visual information from within the pod itself, and you think that adding yet another button is going to be easier than "Open the pod bay doors, please?"
Speech recognition is like a CLI for people without fingers. It will never take over as the primary interface between humans and computers.
Most of us here are fairly comfortable with a CLI, because we know the commands to use. However, we're in the vast minority.
We've already advanced past the CLI, past using command keywords towards using visually intuitive interfaces. Speech recognition would be even worse than going back to using CLIs as the primary interface, because I know most people can type rm ~/foo/blah.js faster than tey can speak it to a computer. Probably even more people can just drag the icon for the file to the trash can even faster.
However, where speech recognition can be useful is in dictation.
mbbac
I have a voice control system for my home automation and my car-stereo (autopc) and I use the voice system very little and use the keypad or buttons. Why? it's faster and takes less effort to just press the button to select a fm station instead of saying "autopc, fm, preset, 6" and it takes less time to press my away button on the lcd instead of saying "jeeves, set, mode, away"
voice recognition is better today but it is still horribly crappy. the computer cannot regulary distinguish human speech (espically english) or how we are contantly modifying our speech and commands.. a human understands that "I'm leaving now","See you later!", and "Set to away mode" to be the same thing. the computer doesnt, and cant understand you if you yell, have a cold, or the nise of the kids is higher then normal. until they can create a speech recognition engine that has the abilities of a human with an IQ of around 50 it will be useless.
speech response on the otherhand I use all the time. I prefer to be told the number of voice and email messages when I enter the house, to hear the over-speed alert from the car stereo, and to hear confirmation in a human-esque voice.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
are just plain bunk.
Everyone knows that the interface we most desire would have BOTH visual and audio. The ability to analize an image and understand it and then describe it textually and to take a textual description and display it visually.
We want hands-free interaction in all it's forms.
I want a retinal implant or pair of glasses which can display information fed to me via a at the same time I am fed audio information through an earpiece/implant which I can sub-vocalize commands to. A compltely interactive interface which is non-obtrusive to my daily life.
Is that too much to ask?
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
I think the real answer to this, as with many things in life, lies in Star Trek. They have a pretty good blend of visual and speech interfaces for computers. When giving the computer a command or trying to explain something to it, the easiest method is speech. When they need to get the real work done, though, they always go back to the visual LCARS interface. That seems like it will be the most likely outcome.
[insert witty quote here]
"he says"
Talk about how talking impairs thinking.
I can see how scrolling is poorly done with voice. However, you're example doesn't work for me either. I almost always google on something that I wouldn't want to say.
(For example, this is my most recent google search: turbine javax.servlet.ServletException: Wrapper cannot find servlet class)
I can't think of anything I would prefer say over type when I'm using my computer. As a matter of fact, when I talk to people at work I like to have an IM window open too so that I can give certain messages to them without saying it.
Can you think of another example?
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
There is a app for windows that is real similar to Photomesa, it is called ZoomBrowserEX. I am not sure if it available by itself, but it came with my Canon digital camera. I'll have to look at it more closely, but it might be built on some similar algorithms.
You can see all of your directories in one big window. Click on a directory name, and the box 'zooms' in to show the other directories or pictures or files within it.
They have another image viewer that came with the package, or rather it is the same one, just a different way of looking at things. It tries to simulate a time tunnel. So you get a pseudo-3D spiral on your screen which you can 'zoom' into (like going down a tunnel). Your pictures will fly by you as you progress. Haven't played with that one much, but looks promising.
- A non-productive mind is with absolutely zero balance.
- AC
I don't think that's totaly true. There is a huge use for voice use in smaller machines like phones, and in 'non-computer' things like cars or homes when you might just want to change a setting that dosn't need a information display to show you the change, for example if you say "turn of the lights" you don't need a message box that say "lights: 40%"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
As part of my dissertation research, I am building a Java-based system called E.B.L.A. (experience-based language acquisition), which allows a computer to learn language based on experiences that are grounded in perception using a computer vision system.
Of course having experiences grounded only in visual perception is a limitation, but it is a start.
Are there any better ones out there
How about iPhoto?
for either Linux or Win32?
Oh, sorry.
--
$tar -xvf
That's my own quote --I think-- but it was one of the major themes of Big J. Derrida's book White Mythology which was one of his more important works. In it, he gave a number of convincing arguments to the effect that text preceeds speech or that speech was something like a metaphor of text. The notion that speech came before text could be found in writings going back to the Greeks, but Derrida switched it around and presented the whole thing as a deconstruction of western civilization, christianity and knowledge. Rather heavy stuff, but fun when you're a kid.
Anyhow, I thought I'd point out that this had already been concluded in other elements of academia --yep, that's what they do over there in the English dept. Hey, English is a programming language too after all. Look at Smalltalk if you don't believe it.
Anyhow, speech being the little brother of text doesn't necessarily mean that talking computers will never exist. I agree with those who say a combo plate is usually a good bargain. We need to look to the next level rather than battling one sense against another over what the best I/O channel is. I'm talking about total sensory immersion. Hal didn't have jack shit to offer the crew compared to the holodeck. I mean come on, playing chess and you had to move the pieces for him with your hand? That aint going to cut it for entertainment these days.
Macs have had this kind of capability for, oh, say the past 8 years or so?
:)
Get a cheap, old, Mac, learn AppleScript, get yourself some mics, and play with it's text-speech and voice recognition software!
Or get a new Mac; those capabilities are still there
GPL Deconstructed
On the video clip, check out the calendar browsing. It is a new UI approach that overcomes the traditional obstacle; click on a day or an item, and it zooms open, but you still have the whole calendar on the screen, it just shrinks to accomodate. This is an improvement; traditional calendaring apps make you jump back and forth, when what you really wanted was to find an event, look at nearby days that are open, and reschedule it. Look at the stock analysis thing he was doing, too; it's about being able to select and find information intuitively without losing the big picture or its context.
What they are trying to do is find visual strategies for accessing information without hiding its context from view, and provide actions that correspond to helping us find and use information. Think about the above examples and compare to traditional file browsers. The "vfolders" thing in Evolution is a step in the right direction; people want to find information by context, which has more interconnections than a simple hierarchical structure.
Speech is very unlikely to provide the core of interface, though it may be important at certain steps: "This is a picture of my daughter. Find me other pictures of my daughter." That's the speech part of the interface; but the important part is that a visual display of the results should also show thumbnails of pictures *near* those of your daughter; that way, you remember the occasion or timeframe, and context, so when you see a group of pictures of her at a birthday party, you know they go together and you can focus on that group of pictures to find the one you *really* wanted. When combined with the right interface, it's clear that visual approaches are faster *and* more effective. How information gets in and out of the computer is trivial. I don't, however, want to have the computer say "I found 15 images of your daughter. Would you like me to show them to you?" Too slow, too much slow conscious thought.
Interstingly, the title bar in the video looked like windowmaker to me! There's no *inherent* reason that useful interfaces can't be developed on an alternative OS. Put their calendar tricks into Evolution, and people might start realizing that Windows is not the source of innovation!
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
O Female Starship Enterprise Voice!
The Silken Strains of your Status Report
And error messages, long and short
Cannot exist; we have no choice
But to point and click, to touch and stroke
Plasma Displays that explode under fire.
Or when tempest-tossed by space/time dire
Make extra low-rank bridge crew croak --
What cruelty! Oh proud Science, how could you
Leave the future so truncated, without
Considering an old trekkie's doubt
of limits to what we can do?
For if our starships don't even talk to us,
Could we ever discover warp-speed, thus?
- undoware.ca
If brightly coloured spandex clothes ever become commonplace I'm quitting this planet...
If I could have the body that goes with them - movie-star appearance, no (or greatly slowed) aging (and reversion to prime-of-life apparent age), improved stamina, mind that stays sharp under stress, exhaustion, and injury, rapid healing (including from repeated beating-to-unconsciousness) - bring 'em on!
I won't even insist they be bulletproof and have anti-gravity, supercomputer w/comm, vacuum & radiation shielding, air recycling, and warp drive.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
iPhoto is like attacking Russia with a toothpick. If you've got 50 or so pictures, it's fine and dandy, but when you start tossing directories containing thousands of images, many hundreds of k in size per image (for instance, the NASA Blue Marble images) - iPhoto goes down like an out of work showgirl at a Las Vegas Networld+Interop.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Your IDE "hears":
So, I figure that as one of them code-monkey sorts, I'm not gonna' figure on losing my keyboard anytime soon.
ps, the code was of course lifted from the "CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX" joke text
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
2 . tml
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation
of thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes.
But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts:
the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place
in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal
organs.
Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he
credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from
one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter
instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come
to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with
itself and content just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject,
his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and
indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again.
The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem;
it can only shift it from one place to another.
(Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
http://www.elib.com/Steiner/Books/GA004/TPOF/pofc
many proponents of Human-Computer Interaction take the view
that 'machines will become more intelligent', and this stems
from a view that regards the human brain as a computer.
my question is -- what do you have to say in relation to Searle's
Chinese Room and the Turing Test? Do you have any insight beyond
where Searle and Eccles have already gone? on the opinion that
the 'Brain is a Computer'?
>> Synopsis of Some Existing Research on the Problem:
according to Nobel Prize Neurophysiologist JOHN ECCLES in his
book 'Understanding the Human Brain' - the brain is not to be
understood as a computer; rather it works more like a TRANSCIEVER
for Conscious Experience.
this is confirmed by a second Scientist, JOHN SEARLE, who refuted
the 'Turing Test' in two articles: 'IS THE BRAIN A DIGITAL COMPUTER?',
and 'MINDS BRAINS AND PROGRAMMES' * thoroughly, disputes the
view that the Human Brain is an instantiation of a digital computer
programme.
* MINDS BRAINS AND PROGRAMMES (THE CHINESE ROOM):
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs/Archive/bbs.sea
IS THE BRAIN A DIGITAL COMPUTER?
http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/P
there you have direct testimony from the Scientific Establishment
that directly contradicts the view that 'The Human Brain is a Computer'.
For Chrissake, this is getting rediculous. Speech works just fine for interfacing with ordinary human beings after all. I mean, I know that we're all used to internet chat, email, message boards, etc, but unless you are a complete loser you've got at least a few friends and co-workers that you speak to on a regular basis. Natural language(speech, hand signals or what have you) is efficient, powerful and universal in human beings. Here's why it hasn't happened *yet*:
1)Computers don't speak any language, at least not like people do. Binary code is *not* a language, as we know it. It is logic, a series of instructions.
2)Computers will need to become a whole lot more powerful before they can develop the necessary features to be able to overcome (1).You and I speak a semantic language, one that is dependent on meaning. It doesn't help to simply make arbitrary relations of one thing to another in a computer's memory because ultimately the computer has no concept of *what* the things are let alone why they should be related. This is extreeeeeeeemely important.
Human Language Technology is the future, and it is going to be very difficult to escape it. And no, not all human-->computer action will be spoken, just like it is often more efficient for you to sit down an a typewriter and type rather than to dictate to someone else. Lets take Star Trek(tm) as an example. As far as I'm aware, the trekity folks still interfaced with the computer in traditional ways...punching buttons/menus/etc. But for abstract requests, it was so cool to hear them say: "Computer...give me all the statistical aberrancies for blah in the blah blah."
Just think, in the 50's barely anyone could picture ordinary folks interfacing with computers at all.
I've actually used a voice recognition system that worked well (OS/2 4). I was amazed at how accurate it worked.
But I shut it off after two weeks. It was embarassing and inefficient.
It was embarassing to talk to a computer. Really. Wether you're all alone in your geek compound, or in a maze of twisty cubicles all alike, you just don't want to talk to your computer. You don't want the people around you to know what you're doing with your computer. Conversation is interactive, but you don't want to interact with an inanimate object. (and those times you do want to interact in just a manner are the times that are most embarassing to be overheard...)
Scenario:
"Computer, erase Bob's addendum to the memo..Oh! Hi Bob! Didn't see you standing there."
And it's inefficient if you know how to type. I can type faster than I can speak. I expect most people who know how to type will agree. If you don't know how, I still bet you can use your mouse faster. How fast does it take to say "Mickeysoft Word" compared to clicking on the icon right in front of you and the desktop?
Scenario: After you have learned how to read, you read books silently to yourself, despite the fact that the drama could be vastly intensified by speaking the dialog out loud. "That's quite enough baths, don't you think, Samwise Gamgee!"
Using the present paradigm, I definitely can see a use for dictation, and some specialty applications. But not much else makes sense for a desktop metaphor. You don't talk to your wood/melamine desktop, so why talk to your computer desktop?
But other paradigms may emerge. For some of them, voice control may make sense. But I really don't forsee that situation for another couple of decades.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Photomesa is based on the Jazz API (a Java class lib), that implements a ZUI (zoomable user interface), a paradigm sometimes described as 2.5 D interface.
You can use the mouse to move in xy plane und with an extra key press (or possibly via mouse wheel in J2SE 1.4) you change the height of the camera in z direction. This combined with semantic zooming, which means different levels of detail associated with the height, make for very nice user interfaces.
A similiar API has been developed at Xerox France, the VTM library which used by the W3C for the nice IsaViz tool.
Despite IMHO Java still sucks regarding performance, both APIs perform very well with large object scence graphs. Like I wrote, combined with Java's luxury 2D API, it enables us to build attractive user interfaces.
Regards,
Marc
Exactly! The keyword here is "control." The article claims that speech is not a great way to exert detailed control over a machine. They're quite correct. The example they use is using speech to page down or highlight and italisize a word.
Long before word processors and even type writers, people used stenographers and secrataries to take diction. If you were dictating a letter, you didn't set look over the secratary's shoulder and tell her when to change pages or which words to italisize. You simple talked and trusted her to handle the details.
So long as a computer is a machine requiring detailed control and instructions, speech is an awkward interface. Once computers reach the point (and they will) where they can be trusted to handle the details and only need broad, general instructions, speech will become a viable interface.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
But it seems to me like all this guy is saying is what some of us computer users have known for years. Humans react better to visual stimulus. This is why we have GUIs, why we have icons, why the stop button in netscape is a trafic light. Why road signs are pictues and not words (ask most people to describe a stop sign and they will say a red hexagon, very few times will they say a sign with stop writen on it). This is why the mouse was invented. It's easier to do things based on images and pictures than it is to proces it and put it into words (A picture is worth a thousand words, remember?) This really doesn't suprise me, the folks at Apple, or at Microsoft, or web designers (thumbnails, arrows for buttons etc). People associate images with words and actions, that's why you show the kid a picture of the cat and say "CAT" and not the otherway arround.
Seriously this guy really doesn't make much of a valid point about the voice commands. The basic idea of voice command, at least as I see it is to have something akin to startrek, where you can ask the computer to perform searches and display information via voice or via your own typed input. The voice commands are there to make things easier, not to be the dominate method.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Silly man...
I'm talking about computers for human interaction in everyday life. We'll still program and administer with keyboards.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Generaly speaking (from mac experience and the ocasional windows boxen) "Return" is the keyboard equivilent of yes (or the least destructive item i.e. no on the format box). Comand (or in windows control) D usualy is "Don't Save" and most buttons are the command key + the first letter of the button. And cancel is almost always command-period and/or the escape key.
As I understand it, the laws of dialog boxes are as follows (at least for macs):
1) If the command given has the potential to be destructive, ask for confrimation.
2) The default button (highlighted, return, etc) should always be the least destructive choice (save on a save dialog box, No on a format or erase dialog)
3) The most destructive choice should never be higlighted and should always be kept seperate from the other choices. Hence, the Don't Save button is the furthes away of all choices.
4) The default and preffered choices should always be on the right hand side.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
(* My uncle used to use a dictaphone (he was a U.S. senator) to dictate all of his speeches. He had no problem. Why? Practice, of course. He had no problem thinking and talking at the same time. It's just what he was used to. He couldn't type worth a damn. *)
Further, many computer tasks will probably have a smaller vocabulary than human-to-human speech. Thus, most of the commands will eventually be *instinctive*, the same way we type without thinking where our fingers go.
What stumps my head is when a PHB wants a simple explanation to a complex problem without warning. My grey matter starts smoking when that happens. Translating from geek to PHB often takes several minutes, but I can't sit there and go uhhhh um uuuuh, because it looks stupid, and he/she won't wait around for that. Car and laundry analogies often work the best, but even those fail sometimes.
I think they just get a kick out of watching my glasses steam up trying.
Table-ized A.I.
The average human has a FAR greater understanding of his sense of sight than he does of his sense of hearing. How can we give an AI understanding of something we ourselves understand so poorly in the first place?
Note that I speak as a Clarke fan with a homebrew HAL desktop theme, and a lifelong audiophile... If only my computer actually MEANT it when he says "good morning, Dr. Chandra" ^_^
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger