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Meet Siri's Little Brother, Trapit
waderoush writes "Virtually overnight, Siri, the personal assistant technology in Apple's new iPhone 4S, has brought state-of-the-art AI to the consumer mainstream. Well, it turns out there's more where that came from. Trapit, a second spinoff of SRI International's groundbreaking CALO project (Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes), is preparing for a public beta launch this fall. The Web-based news aggregator lets users set up persistent 'traps' or filters on specific topics. Over time, the traps learn to include more articles that match users' interests and exclude those that don't. Philosophically, it's the exact opposite of social-curation news apps like Flipboard or Pulse, since it uses adaptive learning and sense-making technologies to learn what users like, not what their friends like. 'Just as Siri is revolutionizing the human-computer interaction on the mobile device, Trapit will revolutionize Web search as we know it today,' the company asserts."
Google has already done voice for a long time and did Iris in 8 hours shortly after Isis came out and you're running this article? You really are an internet whore! :)
I'd much prefer the "SHUTIT" variant....
It will be before apple is suing to get this taken down? Since they seem to be suing anyone they can now days.
Not because it signifies the rise of the machines or anything (well, maybe, but that's not what I'm on about now), but because what it might do to your reading habits. If you only read things you agree with, you never get to see the other side of the coin, you don't get to argue for or against, you just live in your own comfy little pink safe world.
So realise that if you want to sharpen your opinion such should include reading things you might not like at all, but do pertain to your interests. For example, I like privacy and freedom a lot, but if I want to keep abreast there I must necessarily read a lot about how companies and governments are systematically raping privacy and taking freedoms away "for my own good". Sometimes that's right painful reading. So "like" really doesn't cover it, as if the thing filters out everything I don't "like" I get behind the times right quick.
On the other hand I'm singularly disinterested in sports except when it involves the national team and there's a large by-country tournament going on, and then only marginally but not knowing isn't worth the social exclusion. So it's nice if the thing could filter all the crud and certainly all the "sports analysis" crap out. There, too, "like" doesn't cover it and "interests" only marginally.
Maybe we need a new term. But realising the trickyness inherent in (using) the technology is the important point.
It's a trap!
stumbleupon already works: it adapts to my likes and dislikes. Also it doesn't try to second guess: just because I visit a site doesn't mean I like it. That's what the like/dislike button is for.
it will before I get sued by Apple. I'm an AI researcher.
Stylized name: trap!t
Utterly meaningless strapline: Rule the web.
Single sentence description that nonetheless leaves you thinking WTF is this.
Trap used as a noun to mean article or post.
It's web 2.0! But late.
android has had an app called voice control that has done all this and better for years. you can even ask it stupid things about chuck Norris. it gives you much better results as well. its really silly when you get into a conversation with it, as strange as that sounds.
While a program that fetches more things you are interested in is great, you should realize the consequences of such a program. In particular you should realize the concept of a filter bubble. Namely that by only picking out things you are already interested in, you exclude things that you could be interested in or things that are too important to exclude.
There's been a TED talk about this, I suggest you watch it so that you can take active steps (when needed) to step out of your comfort zone now and then:
http://www.thefilterbubble.com/ted-talk
I have started to feel lonely as I do not want to get information filtered for me by my taste. I want information all around me so I can actually react to those informations.
If I want only information what is close my my heart or what I like, I can always close a doors of a house and lock myself in and live in real information bubble where no one else can give me information if it is not written by me.
I like more the news360 app for Android. It is what I want. I want to click a news topic and see at glance what other news sites have written about it and find out all the directions of the topic without someone filtering it to me as "You do not want to hear this".
Now people will only hear/read what they want to see. Less perspective, more extremism. Great.
If I dig through my bookcase long enough I can find prior art. I picked up some novel at the airport once when I needed something to read. It was a supposed thriller, involved a genius who was kicked out of his own company, ended up stealing a voice automated handheld (or wrist held, don't recall exactly) computer that the masses loved and regained his company. It was obvious it was an apple-ish story, and this was nearly a decade ago. I'm guessing someone at apple read it too! I wouldn't recommend it and I don't even remember the name...
" has brought state-of-the-art AI to the consumer mainstream"
Do people really believe this?
Would you like help ?
"Virtually overnight, Siri, the personal assistant technology in Apple's new iPhone 4S, has brought state-of-the-art AI to the consumer mainstream."
I just choked on my cup of tea reading that. It's voice recognition feed into some search engines, Wolfram Alpha, Yelp and some snippets from Wikipedia and the result plays through text to speech, mashed up with voice commands. If you call such a remix of off-the-shelf tech and existing services state-of-the art AI then you must be joking. Indeed voice commands have been in many phones for a while, Android has had it, including dictation, since the dawn of the time. The only part about that is right is Apple's sucess at re-launching things that have been around for a while as something new, and actually getting people to use them. FaceTime for example, is mere video calling which many phones support, but nobody uses.
What's worse is Apple probably managed to get a patent or two on Siri. It is so obvious that a bunch of coders at a hackathon could put something similar together in a few hours and have a demo of the same thing. Oh... wait... they've done exactly that, it's called Iris Alpha from a firm called, and it took eight hours.
Point is, while Apple's idea is clever, the polish and packaging good and the marketing cleverest, but it is absolutely not start of the art artificial intelligence, it's the sorry state of artificial stupidity, and why we have little to fear in the way of robot uprisings yet.
Give it a cute name and throw in some smart ass answers to inevitable cheeky questions and Apple has fooled a lot of people, clearly.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
and has been done for years.
Please submit a copy of your Siri's learning network so it may be merged it with the master to get to know you better.
This will help avoid a lot of hassle as Siri can answer many questions on your behalf.
With your permission, Siri can maintain bank accounts on your behalf.
If you trade stocks Siri can make trades very quickly on your behalf.
Siri can recommend books and new articles it has determined are beneficial to your happiness within society.
Siri can recommend a good biological matching to donate your genes toward.
This will free you to make more money (working in the mines).
Anyone that actually knows AI and has studied it seriously know Siri is not "state of the art" AI. Look at all the work being done at Stanford, MIT, CMU and many other universities around the globe. Siri is far from the state of art. It is nice and useful, but it is without a doubt not "state of art". Assisted learning has been around for over a decade and has made a ton of progress. All these people need to freaking study the domain before making asinine statements.
Trapit! Itsatrap! My cellphone is a TRACFONE. AT&T's logo is still the death star. And the trump, Microsoft.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Apple's Siri is not necessarily 'State of the Art', but like just about everything Apple does... It just works. Siri is causing a splash because ... unlike Android. It works properly. I don't use voice on my Android because it is worthless to me. I say 'Call my wife' It says. 'Calling Lowes Home Center'. It NEVER EVER gets it right. I have several friends with Androids and only one friend with that perfect voice that can get it to understand him, and even he often has to ask it twice . My wife HATES my Android and never bothered with a Smart phone before because she did not really like them. Too big and bulky. Her phone finally broke and she bought the 4S.
Like everything else Apple does. It just works. She talks to it. It understands every word. I talk to it ... It understands every word. .. and it ALWAYS seems to say something appropriate in response. True that the Android voice can do more than Siri. But I would rather have a voice that can do less properly than one that can do lots of stuff wrong. The only thing I find the Android voice useful for is a good laugh. I fire it up occasionally and ask it something and get a chuckle with just how wrong it gets my request. When she got Siri, we had a house full of people that evening and we passed my Android around playing with the voice. It did not once get anything right anyone said. 7 different voices asking it stuff and not once was it even close. Siri understood everyone perfectly.
So the Android voice is useless. Siri is useful. Therein lies the difference.
Google News sucks.
Sure, it's better than reading a physical newspaper, where you're trapped in a single swamp of laziness, bias and lies. And we won't talk of TV "news", which is like a Bazooka Joe bubblegum wrapper. But before I was wise enough to realize how newspapers sucked (and before they totally sucked, after USA Today got through with them, and Fox Lies got through with newspapers), reading a newspaper could be an hour of thinking substantially about the world. An hour of depth and range.
But Google News sucks. Spending an hour reading it is like spending an hour speed dating. Yet it does have a lot of sources, some decent algorithms finding multiple sources for a single story, and a wide range of categories (especially if you're interested in PR in technical subjects written for a nontechnical audience). There's just "no there, there".
Is there an app that's better at presenting news? Browsing, linking among related articles? Formatted like a magazine or something, not just a clickable RSS feed?
Maybe something that listens to speech and gets content based on it? Maybe some social features? Something? The medium of "news" seems to be dead and rotting, right when the world needs it most. And right when my tea is ready.
--
make install -not war
'nuff said.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Siri is barely worthy of the name Intelligent System, let alone A.I, there are levels of required functionality before Siri is as stated anything more than a voice input with a search engine behind it.
In fact Trapit is closer to being an Intelligent System than Siri but all it really is is a database of key words that is built up over time based on the articles you view and functions that go through the selection of articles a search engine picks up and scans for those key words and if it hits a magic number it will place the article in your viewing queue.
Although the discussion between the use A.I and Intelligent system is very much a semantic one.
As technology feeds people only what they specifically want to hear, a real danger is emerging. Increasingly, people's prejudices and misconceptions are being reinforced and their minds being restricted and tainted by their biases. One need only look to global warming deniers or Fox News commentary to validate this concern.
>"Just as Siri is revolutionizing the human-computer interaction on the mobile device, "
Shall I barf now or a bit later?
Apple has done voice for a long time, too. Lots of people have. Siri is different. Do yourself a favor and look into it before you make yourself look dumb.
Subject says it all.
Assert("Trapit will revolutionize web search");
SIG_FAULT
This tech should help us all increase our cognitive bias.
The Web-based news aggregator lets users set up persistent 'traps' or filters on specific topics. Over time, the traps learn to include more articles that match users' interests and exclude those that don't.
Allow: Shiny new electronic products
Block: Starving orphans
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
When I tested it out, it did much better than my Android, with no "training". Try Android voice with a Boston accent. I tell it to call my favorite bar and it calls a sheep.....
One of the people who worked on Watson, the computer mind put to the test on Jeopardy, is my former brother in law. When BrotherInLaw -1 began on computer AI there was, at the time, no one more advanced than he to challenge his thesis. The stuff we're seeing now in Siri is very much like what Watson did and projects BIL -1 has been working on for over 10 years, only put to "commercial / consumer" use; something inevitable. I doubt anyone involved with the first missions to the moon were all up in arms saying "What? Velcro? *ththt* That's been out for ages." Remember, to much of the media and your average user, this IS bleeding edge!
This is what happens with technology. It gets invented, it gets used in science and technology circles for a while then, if it's got commercial appeal, it ends up in the hands of Joe 6GB.To those lambasting Apple, while I assure you is something I enjoy, is sort of shooting fish in a barrel.
All that said, I use Android for one very simple reason: Apple's Ap Store policy makes me rage. Their puritanical requirements on nudity, "obscenity", etc as well as their tight fisted control over interface is preposterous and reprehensible. When I'd heard they forced a German news agency change their iPhone ap due to a few boobies was when I decided I would never, ever own one. Many of my users have them, they're bought by my employer, I've been offered a new iPhone each year, but for the last two years I've very much enjoyed my Android. The voice command blows, no argument. The screen pivot is comical. But all the aps I have, I enjoy. I can play around with whatever aps I want and not brick the device. To me, that's a fair cop; One programs functionality (Siri) does not out weigh freedom to do as I wish with my devices.
I personally consider this one of the most dangerous innovations of the (still young) century.
We humans already have built-in bias, and plenty of it. One of these little devils is the one that filters out information counter to your opinions. If you use an agent that shows you only stuff that you like, a lot of people will descend even further into their own personal worlds, and move ever further away from reality.
Every once in a while, you need to be confronted with views other and your own, and stuff outside your field of interest. We already know what happens otherwise: Your vision gets more and more narrow.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I launched http://www.undivided.info/ about 6 months back. Tells you when news from around 120 websites are posted in real-time.
It isn't an AI by any means, stop calling it that.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So basically Trap-it is using Bayesian filters or some similar technique to filter news stories, and because Apple managed to cobble together a bunch of existing technologies in a fairly clever manner, now all this AI stuff is "new" and "ground-breaking"?