Slashdot Mirror
NASA Uses AI Customer Service Robot In Second Life
Linguo writes "Fusing human psychology with an advanced artificial intelligence engine, MyCyberTwin's virtual humans are being used by organizations like NASA and National Australia Bank to improve their customer support levels. MyCyberTwin technology is designed to allow almost anyone to build a virtual, artificial human — called a CyberTwin — which can handle such tasks as personalized customer support, client sales or even entertainment and companionship. CyberTwins can take the form of a clone of yourself, or a representative of your company, and they can live in almost any digital environment, including Web sites, virtual worlds, blogs, social network pages and mobile phones."
LUCAS: No honey, im not comming home, i have new requirements. .... Three am, lucas arives home....
HER: How come, I even brought out my neglige
LUCAS: Im sorry, ill be there only after three
HER: Well.... why dont we get together in 2nd life: you know how i fantasize about your office desk.
LUCAS: Well thats one way to do it! You are on baby!
HER (sleepy): Hey baby, that was wonderful. I love the way you speak on cyberspace.
LUCAS (grinning): Yeah baby, I know.
NO SIG
"Hey, it looks like you are trying to create an army of flying penises! Would you like some help?"
Stepford Wives anyone?
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
To be underwhelmed, i suspect.
Troll /.?
People still care about second life? Amazing.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
I guess this means more and more people performing simple (that which does not need human judgment or intelligence) tasks will lose their jobs. This is akin to a war, where you make money selling weapons and ensure a comfortable future for yourself at the cost of others. Second Life and their creators will make money now, but everyone else loses. Pigs:1, Sheep:0.
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
as my new CyberTwin overlord.
"I see you're trying to open the pod bay door. Would you like some help?"
"I can see you're really upset about this. Would you like a stress pill?"
How about linking to something which doesn't sound like a press release? ...and this sounds more like Eliza than AI.
This story is in the hardware category, and I'm trying to understand why.... Even if the company is deploying the "cyber-twins" in a hardware solution, it's the software that's innovative here.
If you care to have a play with this, try here: http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/nab/nab/home/personal_finance/4
Seems like a simple keyword searching script, nothing more. The story seems to be a press release, not anything technically innovative.
I am always amazed at how often Second Life is mentioned in various news articles and web sites (and an episode of The Office), because I still have yet to find one person I know who actually plays it or has ever even tried it. Maybe Second Life is really big in the CNN breakroom or something.
A big part of the realism of CyberTwins is their ability to provide realistic, intelligent responses to human queries. If for example, a customer is using aggressive language or is abusing a CyberTwin, it can detect this and push back, like a real person.
Show me my account balance, robot slave!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
For years I've been saying that when video phones get into widespread use someone smarter than me will create software that filters your image in real time to look like a spiffed up version of yourself, or any avatar you want. The avatar would faithfully reproduce your expressions and mouth movements as you talk. You could even enhance your voice if you wanted to. Lots of people wouldn't want to use a video phone because they would have to worry about how they look all the time. Realistic, realtime avatars would eliminate that adoption barrier.
Die you annoying paperclip, die!
When I saw this headline I was hoping it was about using virtual worlds to train an artificial general intelligence, like Ben Goertzel is focusing on with his "novamente" project http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=3%23710. So far he's only implemented virtual dogs (well, he's done a lot more than that, but only really experiemented a lot with dogs, I think), but parrots are next up I believe.
Should I be worried? :P
Julia, Julia, she's our guide,
She directs us far and wide.
If you're lost and can't find your way,
Julia's here to save the day!
- Julia, Islandia's robotic tour guide (c. 1990)
Quite a few Universities do remote learning with SL now, language learning is where I've seen the most development in this space (eg. learning English and Spanish classes). Also there has been a recent upswing in artist sponsorship with quite a few residency programs launching this year as well as a several large corporately funded efforts. Large companies like IBM, Cisco, and Sun have a very strong presences and use the space for cost reduction for remote meetings. A number of museums have also launched SL spaces to complement museum exhibits or expand the awareness of their holdings.
The U.S. Government has a large number of offices represented within the space, from science operations like NASA and JPL doing concept/prototyping work to the DOD doing virtual training exercises.
I'm even aware of one company that does some limited pre-on boarding work in SL by offering new employees the ability to tour a visual history of the business before they even get in the door on the first day.
Also, that's just what you see from the English speaking spaces with in SL. There are actually very significantly sized Australian, Brazilian, Japanese and German contingents within SL. I was most surprised at the shear number of South American banks and telecommunications companies with service offices I found the last time I looked into this myself last year.
While SL is lost on the general populace still, it is far from dead and is steadily growing globally.