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Executive Secretary In Every Computer
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."
gives the user advice, corrects his errors or saves files
His name is Clippy, and I hate him.
Mike
"It looks like you're trying to land a plane. Would you like lunch?"
"It looks like you're trying to talk to a pilot. Would you like to write a letter to him?"
"It look like you're trying to turn me off. Dave. Don't do that Dave."
- Yes please.
- No, I do not need help landing planes.
- No, and don't show Crashy again.
Click here for other automated flight controller assistants.I want to force it to always save to the mapped E: drive... not where the user wants to save it.
The biggest problem is the user that saves things willy-nilly, relies on editing a spreadsheet in an email and never saves it specifically, etc....
Unless it can be told to force certian behaivoir upon the user to be in line with corperate requirements.... I dont see it as useful and more of another PITA app that makes my life more difficult as a Net/sys admin
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What happens when the user is a sick, twisted and sadistic person. Will the computer adapt to that kind of user?
Great, so now Technical Support / Helpdesk staff will have to learn the individual way everyone's PC is deciding to work when talking people through how to do things !
on a serious note, just having word and excel has replaced many thousands of secretaries already. can anyone out there say that typing is solely a clerical skill like it was 20 years ago?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I was thinking about this this very morning, about how my computer should know that I am trying to save a file with a given extension or content and default to a certain directory.
Of course, the annoyance would start when you change your way of doing something, or the computer pre-empts an action which you don't intend to do - You'd have to spend time fixing such problems and wait while the computer re-trains itself.
Sure enough, the article doesn't mention these problems, and how they would be avoided or overcome.
codegolf.com - smaller *is* better.
Probable would work sort of like this.
Mr clippy
--
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
Does that mean that when my mom calls me up for tech support that I'll have to teach her and her computer where the any key is?
Photos.
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?
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Helpful software everywhwre? Sweet Jesus!
It's almost as bad as the polite elevators ("Which floor would you like to go to today") in the HHGTTG.
Software should be like God made it: rude, difficult, and flaky. The users need their daily dosage of pain and whom are we to deny this to them? It's the endorphins, man!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
" The idea is for computers to learn how to use with users -- instead of vice versa. "
can someone put that in a "in soviet russia" joke ? I tried but I was too confused.
08:08 AM -- It looks like you're browsing /. /. ... /. ...
Would you like me to refresh the site 10 times a second to give you a few fr1st p05ts?
09:17 AM -- It looks like you're browsing
Again.
Would you like me to answer your phone and tell everyone that you are in a meeting?
09:45 AM -- It looks like you're browsing
Again.
Would you like me to call your wife and tell her you are working late?
And so on...
What, me Tweet?
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)
-kgj
Great, now the percentage of women working in tech companies will go from 15% down to 2%. Good job, ass.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Wired News has a similar article. Maybe you could just combine the new AI with the cute exterior ofClippy. On the other hand side it would be interesting how much space you have to allocate for the AI database. as far as i remember A.L.I.C.E. needed a quite large AIML file to be just somewhat intelligent. If now the computer should also remeber patterns in behavior and not just talk to you (Alice is a pure chatbot) then in my opinion you need quite large amounts of data to be stored. This could be useful for larger companies with a dedicated AI Server to help their employees (if we talk about AI in a network, why not call ist SKYNET), but on a normal desktop? I think that's too much.
./ today, normally syou surf it for ours during work. Can I help you get there?"
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
".Sig Stealer" was here
here is the wired article about it. It's basically 2 pages of "This technology is nothing like Clippy."
The next killer app, in my opinion, is the application that allows you to not only save content, but also the context (or contexts, even - human beings don't keep things in their head under one strict association - there are multiple pointers to the same information) behind that word doc, picture, etc.
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.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
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.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
>>The software has already been tested with air traffic controllers.
Why did they bother testing it with air traffic controllers when they could have launched it straight onto some low-risk industry, like nuclear power? (Then again maybe we don't want software imitating Homer Simpson's logic.)
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
One nice thing about a good secretary or a personal friend is they will realize when they become annoying and tune themselves down. I think it is essential for this kind of software. Giving advice constantly will inevitably lead to wrong and/or unwanted advice at one point.
ato
It looks like you're trying to land an airplane!
Would you like to find out...
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
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.
Software Error. Of course a document opened from Outlook should be ... READ ONLY ...
... and it was exactly that. It's a serious software and usability flaw in Outlook - and although you can train users to avoid it the real fix is to correct the error in the software.
Yes, my Mom lost a lot of work she had put into making revisions to a document sent to her by a coworker. She called me up and explained how she had done
it's in my head
As it has been pointed out, the concept of an intelligent computer assistant is not new. In addition to the other projects mentioned, Sony is working on a project they call the "Sensing Computer", a PDA-sized device that will contain a software agent that will memorize your data and your usage patterns in everything from your passwords to your friends names and birthdays to your favorite ice cream, and will prompt you when you need info and/or are dealing with the world around you.
Darpa is working on a project under its total information awareness program called "lifelog", where a computer model will be developed of your likes, dislikes, behavior patterns, and everythign about you so that a computer model can be built. This model could then be used to predict behavior or spotlight devations from the norm that may indicate criminal or terrorist activity. Kind of like a predicitive "Big Brother" AI. If this technology comes to pass, it will make Orwell's nightmare look like a shopping mall in comparison.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
Exactly, and this context could be applied to many things. For example, when I download torrents of anime now, I always save them to the same folder which is my holding area for anime I download, which I later move to its correct folder upon viewing. If my computer could sense that I was downloading anime (yet again) and direct it to the proper folder, that would be great. If it could generate a list of what I've viewed completely, what I've partially watched, and what I haven't watched yet, that would be amazing.
Even better, sometimes a series gets moved around in my folder because it has a different file name than others of its kind because it was subbed by a different group. I do not rename the filenames because I like to keep them the same for when I send to others, yet if my computer could figure out that a file was part of a certain group of files even though it had a different filename, that would be a great boon to my productivity.
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