Slashdot Mirror
Robot Receptionist with an Attitude
techno-vampire writes "Carnegie Mellon University is experimenting with a robot receptionist with a personality. The article on NPR tells about the receptionist, named Tank. Tank lives in a computer, with a Frankenstein-like face showing on the monitor. He responds to typed-in questions, including personal ones, with a rather curious personality courtesy of the Drama Department. Among other things, he doesn't seem to like his boss, Dr. Reid Simmons, very much. If asked, Tank will tell you he's also worked at NASA, and failed as a satellite robot. A job at the CIA was also a bust. Dr. Simmons explains that they're trying to make it easier for people to interact with robots, and upgrades are planned."
This is really not that new. Before the current roboceptionist, we had Valerie. I really can't tell the difference between the two - when they first installed Tank, I thought it was a Halloween joke. (He looks somewhat like Frankenstein on the monitor). There is a different face and a different voice, but it seems the same. If you ask "Will it rain tomorrow" he will either not understand your question, or give you the current weather. Trying to find out tomorrow's weather is still rather difficult. Yes, it is an interesting experiment, and yes, it can give directions (rather clearly) to various locations on campus, but it's not at the point where secretaries need to worry about losing their jobs (yet).
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n ews/2005/12/26/wrobot26.xml
Wakamaru is a bit friendlier than tank and acts as a security guard.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I'd do it. Think of the stories you could tell later in life!
Everyone bones a fat girl at least once. Why? Most of it is because they're having a bit of a dry run and they're getting desperate, but a lot of it is for the stories they tell their buddies afterwards. "My hand slid between her rolls, and I was all 'fuckin' 'ell, give me that back!, but she didn't, and it just kept going in further and further until I was elbow deep, standing on her stomach and yanking, hoping against hope that I wouldn't have to gnaw my arm off at the shoulder-bicep region before her flab consumed my very soul", followed up with "So, she starts going crazy, screaming '01111001 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01111001 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01100110 01110101 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100001 00100000 01110011 01110100 01101001 01100011 01101011 00100000 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110101 01110011 01100010 00100000 01110000 01101111 01110010 01110100 00100001', but at this point, her sata cable had fallen off her cd drive and was just flapping around everywhere and really freaked me the fuck out, so I stopped, gathered my things, and ran for it.".
I never said they'd be good stories, exactly. But still worth noting!
That's the Turing test. It's best done by asking something out of context. For instance, when talking about music ask: "did the car where you learned to drive have an automatic transmission?". A robot would need to have a very large set of information about human experiences to be able to answer a random question like this. One effort to develop such a system is the Cyc project.