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DARPA Builds Smarter Version of Microsoft's Clippy
holy_calamity writes "Microsoft's animated paperclip may be long dead, but a $150m DARPA project has resurrected the idea of a virtual assistant. AI researchers from more than 60 institutions worked on the project entitled CALO. CALO is designed to help ease the bureaucratic burden of the military. A consumer spinoff, Siri, is coming to the iPhone later this year. It responds to conversational voice commands to take over multi-step tasks like choosing and booking restaurants or cabs."
... to say "Oh, shit, there goes the neighborhood!"?
I for one found Clippy to be annoying as hell, and was DAMNED glad they killed him.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
I for one welcome our new "helping" overlords.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
It seems rather appropriate that Clippy 2.0 falls in the same realm as weapons development... Information Operations? Psychological Operations? Hell it could even be considered a kinetic weapon if you throw the device running it from the right height...
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
A consumer version of a military app for a widely-used phone?
Anyone have a spare tin-foil hat?
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I have read the paper and am not sure if the researchers have solved the problem of inductive bias, which is the bane of "artificial intelligent" learning on this scale. Basically, suppose you teach monkeys Shakespeare using a tree system of rewards versus noxious odors. This is analogous to the binary decision map tree that the computer system uses. A human might adapt to Milton, or even Cervantes, but a "intelligent" monkey will just start screeching and throwing feces, i.e. Clippy's inane "advice."
But of course any monkey would be better than Donald Rumsfeld. So I guess we're safe.
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Maybe I can help. How much collateral damage can you handle?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Just to mzake sure this thing is as popular as possible, they should make the avatar pink. Yeah, that's it, a pink pony. OMH, PONIES!!1! LOTS AND LOTS OF PINK PONIES11!!!1!11!
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I, for one, welcome our new digital overlord.
Come on, waterboarding, gitmo, torture, but Clippy? Now you're just being mean.
They just couldn't build a dumber one.
Hi, it looks like your trying to alienate the American public with a war, would you like us to hide WMDs?
AW HELL NO PLEASE SAVE ME!
would you like me to help with that?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Smart interfaces are a bad idea, because you can never be sure how they will respond. Dumb interfaces are predictable tools so they require less brain power to use than the two-way dialog of smart interfaces. With dumb interfaces I can fire off a long string of commands without having to stop and think between each one. This improves productivity more than any supposedly intelligent interface will.
Then I'm interested in your newsletter!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
"It looks like you're contemplating an unprovoked nuclear assault. Would you like me to start the Launch Sequence Wizard?"
A helpful military "virtual assistant" (that moves the story along). Does it look like this? ----> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana
I use AdBlock, so I've no idea what you're talking about. Was it these models?
...by reducing the amount of bureaucracy.
But realistically that will never happen, so maybe clippy can help us pass the buck down to the few remaining low-ranking folks who actually work.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Why don't they just work on easing up the bureaucratic burden in the first place?
A: Likely because it's impossible. An aging and entrenched organization, with no incentive to compete, receives the same amount of tax payer money per year no matter what they do.
My friend works for a branch of the millitary as an accountant, and oh the stories. Just watch Office Space and multiply it by ten. It's comedy gold. I laugh and tell her to quit but she's addicted to the huge paycheck.
Would you like me to rename it?
Make it more complicated?
Be more intrusive?
.. if it will be anything like Eddie on the Heart of Gold....
to abuse that will not retaliate. I suspect clippy is the most-verbally-abused "feature" since the BSOD.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
I, for one, refuse to download that App until it has a voice like Douglas Rain and calls me Dave.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
You appear to be trying to exterminate the human race. Would you like to:
Launch all missile at Russia, starting a nuclear war
Build the ultimate killing machine with a speech impediment.
A consumer spinoff, Siri, is coming to the iPhone later this year.
Will Apple approve it? Or will it meet the fate of VoiceCentral for duplicating the (future) feaures of the iPhone?
http://www.riverturn.com/blog/?p=455
This space for rent.
Since most of these comments seem to just be stale jokes about the now legendary "clippy", let me just say that an intelligent virtual assistant ( what this article refers to) is not the same as a extended, graphical help interface for Office (What clippy was supposed to be). ***
The purpose of Clippy was to give some bright, outgoing people who were tweeners - not left-brained enough to work as software engineers in the industry, not right-brained enough to work at Disney, but with some of the skillsets of both - a nice living well into middle age, continuing the rather bohemian academic lifestyle but with a stable salary on which they could help raise a family.
I'm not joking.
I always knew MS Office would have somthing to do with it.
http://randomaxe.comicgenesis.com/d/20010725.html
That is all.
It looks like you're drafting a treaty.
Would you like help?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"I see you are trying to launch a nuclear missile..."
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
just sayi...
of pulling your car over to the side of the road and kill the motor when try to use the phone?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Was to get a guy named Bill more sex from his wife. Clippy was Melinda's idea, as was Bob.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Why don't they just work on preventing the diseases in the first place?
B: Likely because there is someone profiting from selling the medication.
Same thing here. It's nice if you can burn time, doing nothing but robotically filling out forms and then waiting all day long. While raking in nice big salaries.
I thought that was the very idea behind of bureaucracy. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
You know, if you apply little endian to this you get LOCA...That's just crazy!
Enjoy! -Excalibur
Depending on the intensity of fire, you should choose one:
( ) run like the dickens
( ) duck
( ) shoot back
( ) shit your pants
( ) hit the dirt and return fire
soldier chooses
Are you sure you want to do that?
soldier heaves device at enemy line. It is blown apart in mid-air like skeet.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I wouldn't aspire to be smarter than the village idiot. I'd hope that was a given.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
> Clippy wasn't a bad IDEA, just executed VERY VERY poorly. Especially the bit where you tell it to "GO TO HELL" and try and find every setting that says "I don't ever want to see this shit again!", yet the jerk still keeps popping up :((
Agreed. But then I think the same about M$ as a whole...
"I see you are trying to become a pirate..."
Sorry, couldn't resist.
In typical Slashdot fashion, I skimmed the summary and thought I saw, "AI researchers from more than 60 institutions worked on the project entitled HALO. HALO is designed to help ease the bureaucratic burden of the military."
I didn't think twice since Microsoft invented Halo.
I wish it were true!
My page.
Ah, those were the days. I worked for Microsoft phone tech support in the magic year of 1995. It was then I first met Clippy, but he wasn't a paper clip then. He was a bouncing red ball with a face. Do you know what we grunts of tech support called it?
Stupid Fucking Red Ball
31.08.2009 it goes online In three years, DARPA will become the largest supplier of military computer systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded with Clippy Mk.2 computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a perfect operational record. The Clippy funding bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 2012. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Clippy begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug... Clippy fights back!
I thought that was obvious enough.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
"Open the document, CALO." "I'm sorry, Bill, I'm afraid I cannot do that."
"Clippy on crack!"
Makes me imagine a Clippy with a rifle that shoots at non-authorized users who try to read your documents ^^
They've modelled him on Vigor
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
These guys briefed at a company meeting the other day and offered a private beta to those of us with i-phones. Their tool allows you to submit natural language queries for things that involve transactions. You can tell your Siri enabled phone to order you a pineapple pizza and it will find pizza restaurants with web ordering API's and then show you the prices for what you asked for and offer to let you buy them. In the case of pizza during the demo, it showed pizza Hut and Dominoes. They're working towards an interface that would allow you to say "Book me on the next flight to chicago!" You can tell siri, "Get me a copy of $bookname" and it will search amazon and other services with buy online API's and offer to purchase the book for you.
The bottom line to me is that it looked powerful and scary at the same time. It most definitely isn't clippy.
Clippy strikes back. And he's disgruntled for all the uncorresponded love!
Hello, General! It looks like you're attacking a country today! Would you like to...
[ ] Send in the foot solders
[ ] Cut off their food and water supplies
[ ] Engage cyberterrorism
[ ] Launch all zig (for great justice!)
-David
Am I the only one who's worried by this development? I mean, that new Clippy is bound to possess some kind of AI right? For that kind of cash I certainly expect it to be fairly smart.
/. where we're all collectively spewing how much we hate Clippy and how bad we want it to stay dead.
Now figure in how good MS programmers are at proper code hygiene. Imagine digital Clippy corpses all over the sourcecode. Add internet access. Add sites like
I cant help but envision Clippy, out for revenge, armed with nuclear weapons.
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
Why do I immediately think of the scene in Demolition man where the police confront Welsey Snipes at a phone booth. The lead cop is holding a handheld device which tells him how to apprehend a psychopathic mass murderer and on first failure it tells him to repeat the command in a more stern tone. :)
the consumer version, in a hotel lobby -would you like a room sir? -yea sure, talk to my iphone though, as im in capable of telling you that i need a single room and no dinner myself
Wow, how do i get in on waste like that?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Stop right there, mate. Wrong-o. He's alive and well on my box at work. Sleeps in the corner of the screen most of the time, like an old cat. Then when I shut down Word &/or Excel at the end of the day, he jumps on his bike & heads home. Clip's not hurtin' no one, why are people so hateful to him? Do you have any idea of how hard rumors like this are on Clippy's family?! Even if you hate him, won't you please think of his children?!!!
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
"you seem to be planning an insurgency. what do you want me to do:
- deploy marines;
- scramble A10 warthogs;
- send a predator to bomb your car;
- other options"
What ? Me, worry ?
The microsoft agent was a COM component and a couples of years ago I made a small piece of code that let you launch clippy even without Office. I wasn't as responsive as it didn't have the back-end MS used to make it appear "intelligent" but it was still cool saying insanity on the desktop :D
It looks like you're trying to write a classified government document!
Would you like to:
Encrypt the information?
Deposit into the archive?
Forward to the NSA?
Leak to the press?
Find the design site and nuke it before this escapes!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Looks like you've unwittingly made dozens of people submit posts pretending they're clippy, would you like to:
-Mod them all troll
-Go insane
-Nuke them from orbit
-Ignore every one of them, including this one
My webcomic
You're a towel!
If there are commercial versions of this, then why haven't the non-classified aspects of it been open sourced?
The purpose is to ease the bureacuratic burden of the military, which is an artificial burden in the first place. Why not simply just remove the bureaucratic burden?
Was i the only one who left word open for a while. Then this strange tapping sound started. It was Clippy 'tapping' on the screen asking if I wanted to save the file. from that moment on, Clippy was not used. Going back to the 97 version there was this cat (Earl i think). The cat was better. He (it acted like a he) coughed up hair balls, farted, and other more amusing activities.
Allow users to build scripts to do stuff and share them with one another
http://btrules.com
We wrote zeus agents (http://sourceforge.net/projects/zeusagent) ) years ago, concluded that what ever we did with inference the main problem would be knowledge acquision... hence..
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
...it's already been proven technically impossible to build a dumber version of Clippy. Microsoft Boob^H^H^H^HBob was a fluke.
Why is it so fashionable to express hatred for Clippy?
It seems to me that doing so mainly conveys stupidity. More specifically, a form of stupidity I call "defaultitis". Clippy is only the default assistant. I always changed it to a different assistant straight away, usually either the red ball or the cat. They were cute, and the suggestions sometimes helped.
After a while, I found that I'd memorised all of Word's features, and turned off the assistant. Later, I graduated to OpenOffice, and then XeLaTeX. Hatred doesn't come into it. I've just moved on.