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Smart Cellphone Would Spend Your Money
jonknee writes "MobileTracker pointed to an article in the latest New Scientist about some new 3G mobile phone software that tries to learn your habits and start making your decisions for you. This sounds like science fiction, but it's happening now. The phone will be able to make reservations for you at your favorite steak house and then save seats for you at the hot event in town. Neat!"
I swear honey, I didn't rent these pornos, my cell phone did!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Not really. Scary yes. I'll make my own decisions thank you.
-Craig.
Microsoft announces new line of "smart" cell phones along with new catchphrase "This IS where you'll go today"
Get a free Ipod!
I hope it checks with my calendar to make sure I'm free for that friday night concert!
the phone automatically buys a few shares of Nokia's stock
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
Hey, the other consumer electronic that guessed what you liked was TiVo, and everybody complains about how it assumes the wrong stuff all the time. How can this be better, or 'neat' then? I don't want my electronics to guess what I want, I want them to be predictable. That is the only way i can rely on them, if I can predict them, instead of the other way around.
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
Damned if I can find the actual cartoon online, but most Dilbert fans know the one I'm taking about:
"The software has found your credit card number and
is placing orders for new products it thinks you need... please wait."
~Philly
It might sound like a bankruptcy waiting to happen, but software engineer Nick Jennings is supremely confident the phones will not mess up anybody's life.
If you have to tell people "dont worry it won't mess up your life", I think you might have problems.
Like the robo-maid that cooks and cleans- don't worry it won't murder your wife and kids in their sleep.
bite my glorious golden ass.
I'd hate it when my cell phone tells me I'm a boring human because no one ever calls me and knows I spend all my time at home in front of the computer.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I can't wait until the mobile virus-loaded spam and SMS messages I'm going to get on my 3G phone corrupts the agent software on this "smart" phone and signs me up for all sorts of mortgages, prescription drugs, porn, printer cartridges and tropical vacations galore.
Viral marketing. Priceless.
Weren't software agents going to do this a few years ago? Learning your habbits from browser and going out there, negotiating deals with other agents. History does repeat itself, especially the things that didn't happen.
Before there are too many replies about how it can't decide what you want to do for you, the article states that the software makes it's decisions based on information from your calendar entries. It will learn what your preferences are for specific types of entries.
The main section about how it works in the article is this:
The software's main focus is to recognise when you have a trip coming up in your diary, and then ask if you want it to check the availability of flights and hotels. In time, Jennings hopes you will decide to trust it to book the entire trip, choosing your preferred seating, route, day trips - and even allowing it to spend cash.
The cellphone agents only offer help if triggered by a diary event or if a definite pattern of behaviour, such as going to the movies every Friday, has been established.
The only thing I can't quite figure out is how it's going to reserve a spot at my favorite steak house given that it doesn't have an electronic reservation system =P. Airlines reservations, etc are all fine and dandy but many of my appointments aren't something software can handle without human intervention and if it was handled by an intermediary person, then we'd have many more privacy issues to worry about.
Don't wives already make decisions for us. Why on earth would we want a phone to also do this, its already a pain in the ass as is.
While us Americans are chuckling and wondering why anyone would want this, as many posts are showing...
In Japan is is absolutely critical for every teenage girl to have exactly the same stuff as every other, or else she faces some rather severe social consequences. It's no secret that these girls/sheep run the Japanese economy.
So once sales of product-X reaches some critical mass all the girls phones can be programmed to detect it and keep up by ordering the product immediately.
In all seriousness, this will relive the stress of keeping up for many girls, and make their lives a bit better.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
This could be a real boon for those juggling lovers. If the phone can learn the preferences of each person you sleep with, there will be no more embarrassment of accidently taking the vegetarian to the steak house.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How about they make a phone and a service plan that gives you quality connections and no dropped calls? Why do I need phones that wipe my butt for me but can't make a phonecall?
Does it get bored?
No thanks. Once this gets rolled out, Ashcroft will want to be able to "monitor" what's going on, so that persons of interest will be more easily monitored.
I can see it now.... I'm a suspected terrorist or otherwise a person of interest... my phone makes a bunch of plans for me (spied on by some law enforcement agency). Unbeknownst to me, while I'm sitting there watching Matrix Revolutions the three feds around me are plotting my capture while another two are at my house going through my shit (since they know I'm not at home). Sold out by my phone and provider. No thanks.
Wake up folks, not all of this is stuff we really need in our lives.
My wife is already making all my decisions and spending all my money. I don't think she's going to cede that power to my cell phone.
The obvious concern, of course, is if the system is "cheated" by the authors of the sites referenced. What if the system "accidentially" tells the cell phone the wrong price of a hotel by exchanging the dollars and cents or somesuch, but is referenced by ID number and winds up costing $98.24/night instead of an incredible deal of $24.98 per night?
And I sincerely doubt that the company invovled would be altruistic enough to reject deals to make the selector have a preference for certain companies, even if it's not tied for best deal. It would definitely be logging what's used.
It would lead to an interesting opportunity: targeted ads sent to a cell phone, using the n00 shin3y color displays, eating minutes while they automatically download as an "additional cost" to the service- on the discount plan, of course. Imagine the chaos if they didn't disable such a disfeature during, say, roaming or overtime...
Although it might seem people would ignore them, what if your phone forced you to watch an ad before using certain features- and then quizzed you on the advertisement to make sure you saw it?
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
I just have this vision of an arrest suspect who's AOL branded phone browser starts to chirrup; "You've got bail! You've got bail!"
What I can't buy is a phone that is a really good telephone. I want a phone that gets great reception, has accurate voice recognition and a sane user interface, a good speaker and microphone, and talks to my computer via USB or IR instead of a $100 proprietary dongle. In other words, I want a phone that does all of the things modern cell-phones do, but does them well.
-m
After some months of this person working for you, you begin to realize that calling you on your cell phone while you are away from the office to confirm every little thing gets a little tiresome, so you tell your secretary to use reasonable judgement instead. All the secretary has to do is check your calendar to see what you already have scheduled, and make any necessary appointments based on that. Now the secretary is only calling you once or twice a week, usually when something requires your signature or if authorization is needed for spending money for something or other.
After several years, you finally decide that this secretary has worked for you long enough that they deserve more complete trust, so you grant them signing authority on your behalf.
Now if this secretary abuses the new-found power, charges for embezzlement can fairly easily be made, but if this "secretary" were nothing more than a computer... what could possibly be done?
This is a Bad Idea(tm), I'm afraid.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
A lot of the things here have been modded as funny, but it's a fairly serious point.
There is nothing wrong with using technology to lighten workload, but letting it take away actual decision making is definatly a step too far.
This trend has increased a lot over the last few years - every new iteration of a program seems to take information away from you and just give you a 'summary' to make your choices from, and now they want it to make the decision as well? Sod that for a game of soldiers.
What I want is _more_ information (and unbiased information too, no Fox for me thanks) presented in a clear format, so that I can make good decisions. _That_ would be a good application of technology, a thousand times more worthwhile than this.
Beep beep.
...wrapping one around your cell phone antenna so it can't spend all your money.
Beep beep.
I, for one, am tired of the adjective "smart" being used with devices that are really quite stupid, in an attempt to make them seem less harmful by marketing weenies. From now on, whenever someone decides to make a "smart" product, I expect nothing short of something that can walk my dog, do the dishes, and pass the Turing Test. ;p
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Anyone who's ever made the mistake of telling their mother that they 'quite like' a certain foodstuff will know to stay well clear of this technology.
Cingular now has this dumb promotion for the charlies angels movie where you send a text message to "ANGELS" or something like that and it enters you to win. Up to 4 times a day too.
So the who goal of the promotion is to get ignorant people to waste $0.10 a message and make Cingular some extra money (quite a bit if you add it up).
Could you imagine this new technology where your phone buys things for you being abused by your cellphone provider? I can.
alot of people are replying that they wouldn't want the phone making the decisions for them, spending their money. Over time, this is exactly what is going to happen. The article says people will have to confirm the choices until the give teh power to the phone. The idea being that they get sick of checking the phone and always saying yes. once it gets to that point you just tell the phone to do it and you can check if you feel like it.
This has already happened to alot of us w/ our spam filters. when i first set up spamassassin I filter everything to a separate folder. I would then check that folder for false positives. There were few enough false postives (i think i have gotten 1, but then agian I have stopped checking B) anyway... there were few enough false positives that I switched everything to go straight to the delete box. If I feel like it I will check but generally it just gets deleted. Because everytime i checked, the computer was making the right decision. People are lazy, giving power over your money seems like a big step but if it keeps making the right choice eventually you will just let it go...
This may be slightly off topic but I think the underlying discussion is the same...
Ebills (for those who may know it by a different name) are basically automated online bills which automatically get deducted from your bank account if you choose to have them setup that way (e.g. your phone bill)
I've noticed this for quite a while now, companies wishing to automate the buying/selling process such that monetary control of an individual is completely eliminated. Worse yet, when mistakes happen, the burden of proof falls completely on the individual and the company's responsibility is non existant!
What I haven't been able to figure out is how these things schemes continue to survive (some would even say 'thrive').
No thank you to ebills and smart phones! Smart and Convinent for whom?