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Intel CTO Says Future Phones Will Sense Your Mood
An anonymous reader writes "Ultra-smartphones that react to your moods and televisions that can tell it's you who's watching are in your future as Intel Corp's top technology guru sets his sights on context-aware computing. Chief technology officer Justin Rattner stuffed sensors down his socks at the annual Intel Develop Forum in San Francisco on Wednesday to demonstrate how personal devices will one day offer advice that goes way beyond local restaurants and new songs to download. 'How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?' he asked."
Will it show calming pictures on the screen while I'm raging at customer service?
We have gone long past ridiculous in what we are having our "phones" do (and why do we even bother to call them phones anymore). Sheesh. A mood phone? I thought mood items went out in the 80s.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQCoCnSHq94
Nokia always talked about feeling pulse and what not. Plus they and Siemens got that TV stuff going and it would be quite obvious they know who's watching that way I guess.
But maybe Intel is just talking in general / will sell sensors for everyone / whatever. But atleast Meego is still a joint Nokia and Intel (Is it just open-source or open for any player to join in and release their own Meego phones if they wanted to?)
Do not want!
"phone call from 'grandma', mood 'horny', press here to accept call"
warning pointless sig
'How can we change the relationship so we think of these devices not as devices but as assistants or even companions?' he asked."
Put me in control of what it does, what info I see, and what info it shares with whom, and I might call it a personal assistant.
As long as the control remains with the media companies, it is a spam assistant plain and simple, and it's only goal is to aid in selling my eyeballs off to the highest bidder for someone's profit.
I say the answer is simple, I just don't think they want to hear it or care about implementing it in that way.
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes," with a footnote to the effect that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Didn't we already learn that computers suck at context?
Clippy anyone?
That's right I used the "C" word!
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I think this is another example of how C-level execs are out of touch with what people actually want. Nobody wants a phone that won't answer phone calls because it believes it senses you're angry and doesn't want you to say something you'll regret.
Seriously, we don't want AI in our fucking phone. This isn't the first time I've seen this kind of disconnect, and it certainly won't be the last.
I can suggest other places for him to stuff his sensors. ...But then, I might also suggest that he get off my lawn.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The good thing about computers is that they respond to the same input identically. If you do X one day, it will do the same thing when you press X tomorrow.
Part of this is that the input is knowable. I can tell that I just pressed "d", or that I just moved the mouse 2.1 inches to the left, and I can tell by experience what that's going to do. Once you factor in things humans don't naturally know, like heart rate or blood pressure, you get a useless input device, as far as interaction goes. The only uses I can think of are highly-targeted advertisements, health/stress apps, and maybe gaming, since Valve is researching this idea as well, for much different reasons.
so which mood does intel want to drive it's userbase towards?
My mood does not reflect the list of things that I need to get done.
When I can ask my phone, just by talking into it, to schedule a meeting, invite certain people, then comb the news to see if traffic will a be worry tonight, and also send my wife a text message apologizing for being late, then report back when it's done, THEN I'll have a digital assistant. Software has barely tapped the ability to serve us with the input we're already giving it. Adding bio-sensor input and "mood detection" now is just a bell/whistle that isn't helpful to me. It's helpful to so many sales channels of which I am the target.
Now if we had these "real digital assistants" then mood awareness would be a true achievement. The text apology to my wife would make her smile lovingly while shedding a single tear.
But seriously, Intel should invest it's billions more into software. Fuel real demand for hardware rather than pimping out yet more bells and whistles.
I guess medical and fitness uses will be pretty advantageous.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Why would I consider a non-living object as a assistant or a companion? It is an object.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There are technologies that we take for granted today that would have seemed preposterous only a few years ago. For example - if someone told me five years go that Google was working on technology to predict what I am searching for, and display the results before I can finish typing - my response would have been "I'll believe it when I see it". Now, after using real-time search for a week, I am sure there will be a time when I expect every search engine to deliver results in real time as I type.
I can understand being skeptical about the "mood sensing mobile phones" being discussed in this article. But to get all bent out of shape about a technology that doesn't even exist yet, and that you will not be obligated to use if it ever is created - I just don't see the point.
After thinking about this technology for a couple minutes, here's one potential use that I might like to see. If you're driving and listening to music at the same time, and the device senses that you are overwhelmed with information (you're lost, for example, and looking for a specific street) - it could lower the volume on your radio to help you think. Nothing earth shattering - just a simple incremental improvement over my car radio today, which is smart enough to raise and lower the volume based on my current speed (another example of a feature I never thought I needed, but appreciate, and will expect to have in any car I buy from now on).
I've seen enough negative comments on this subject. Are there any other positive uses that people can imagine?
Does anyone else see just the slightest bit of danger in giving up your ability to get the content you want and having some device determine what's best for you to view at the moment? Can we say brainwashing?
The title car (in the book, not the movie) behaved like that. It was full of gadgets and whistles, but when it (she?) though one was useful at the current situation it wouldn't (well, almost never) launch it on its own. It just flashed some light over the appropriate handle in the control panel, and the decision to activate the feature was on the driver. Children loved it.
This is how well-mannered smart agents should behave (and no, a giant paper clip talking about nonsense does not qualify).
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
....."you seem a little tense, would you like me to book you a massage?" will be beaten to a pulp and thrown over the side of a bridge.
I'd like Intel to focus more on power efficiency and less on emotional claptrap.
Backward%20compatibility%20is%20over-rated
His PDA begged him to get a pedicure and to wash his feet
What would be the point of that?
Now what might be *useful* is for the phone to:
1. Call some of your friends to drink along with you.
2. Call an escort to cheer you up.
3. Call a cab to get you home at the end of the evening.
That way *you* get a fun evening(or at least a better one than sitting by yourself drinking) and the phone company gets to bill you for 3 additional calls leading to
4. Profit!
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Your thesis may be correct but your example seems moronic. Google realtime search actually doesn't appear to "predict" what I'm looking for but rather just updates my search page while it's idle. Google does provide auto-completion which is essentially an index of your prior searches and some list of prior search others have done. I don't see how an index into a list (or an updating screen) would have been so incomprehensible to you (or anyone) five years ago (especially considering that fifteen years ago the internet was all about 'push technologies').
Mood sensing stuff is a stupid idea because generally it's trying to model a behavior that is likely far more complicated than it's inputs. Which isn't a problem in and of itself - it's what computers do but what I think is key to making this kind of technology successful is that it is acting on voluntary input from the user from there the user can modulate their actions to get the desired response. i.e. Handwriting recognition became useful when people could change their writing to something the computer could predict reliably (i.e. graffiti).
Take your own examples...sensing you are overwhelmed with information isn't a "mood" it's a state based on a myriad of inputs, so is being "lost". The computer can look at your heart rate and perspiration but that doesn't tell it you are overwhelmed or lost. Attempting to do so will however cause the computer to change something that you likely didn't want changed and you have to deal with.
IMHO you haven't read enough negative stuff.