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"Intelligent" Avatars Poised To Manage Airline Check-In
An anonymous reader writes One of the developers behind special effects used in the film Avatar has inked a deal with airline check-in kiosk manufacturer BCS to implement avatars for personalized and interactive customer service. Dr Mark Sagar's Limbic IO is applying 'neurobehavioral animation' combining biologically based models of faces and neural systems to create live, naturally intelligent, and expressive interactive systems. "One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter," Patrick Teo, BCS CEO says. "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."
Yes we all want interactive terminals at the airport. We are not at all concerned about waiting 1 hour to checks bags, another hour to get through security and a third useful hour spent waiting to board. No, let's get hyper-aggressive about how the computer looks at the airport.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
"One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch..." the solution of hiring more people will, of course, not be considered.
I mean, at least they didn't ink a deal with the guys in charge of the Fifth Element. We would all be required to carry a MULTI-PASS!
That human touch we know and love so well.
Personally I'd buy stock in AI kiosk screen repair servicing companies.
the meat sacks in the TSA with these things?
"One of the comments levelled at self-service check in is that it has lost the human touch that people had when checking in at a traditional manned counter,"
So we're going to take away the last humans and replace them with mindless robots.
Well done.
Certainly aced that one.
(As an aside, I've just come through London Stansted including an extra hour in the security queues which went all the way back to the gate when you come off the plane, and I spent much of it yelling and attracting the attention of people around me - my primary beef was that the humans had no humanity, nobody had bothered to go down the line, tell us what we were waiting for, how long it was expected to take, what they could do for special cases - young children, disabled passengers, elderly passengers unable to stand in queue, etc. - or would even bother to do anything to help or give answers.
And when we got to the front, all the "electronic passport" aisles were gone and only the manned aisles were left. I know why they were removed - nobody uses them. They are too much a faff, you can't take children through them, if you're travelling with someone with a non-chipped passport, you have to separate and then wait (hope) blindly for each other on the other side, etc. so even when they were opened, less than 1% of the people there ever used them.
Sorry, if you want the human touch, you have to put humans in there AND then listen to the humans queuing alongside them AND then let those humans sort each other's problems out. Reliance on machines? When I got to the long-stay car park to retrieve my car, it wouldn't let my (immaculately preserved) ticket through two different barriers, so I had to press the button and get someone to let me out, costing me another 10 minutes. Thank god that wasn't my passport at the end of a hour-long queue.
I suppose he's never heard of the uncanny valley affect. This sounds like a great way to RAISE stress, not lower it.
Thanks to a prosthetic knee, I get the "human touch" every time I fly. That's after a trip through the pornscanner and taking out all of my electronics and startingt them up, of course.
As for the kiosks -- if you know what you're doing, the last thing that you need is the kind of condescending "help" that gets in the way of getting your freaking boarding pass.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Humans need not apply.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Lining up to get sexually assaulted, lining up to pay predatory fees, and then suffering many hours on a dirty plane in sardines-in-a-box seating plan are main concerns.
If the problems above solved, I would gladly register using CLI, if necessary.
I'm sure manually processing everything will help with delays and stress.
It should be a requirement that any machine which has the ability to talk should also be able to understand & comply with the audible command "shut the hell up you poorly-scripted shitbox!"
With Aang and Katar? Or James Cameron? Oh, not that kind of Avatar. :p
create live, naturally intelligent, and expressive interactive systems
That'll be a first!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Natural communication? In a crowded airport with a machine? Pull the other one, it squeaks.
Artificial intelligence is nowhere near good enough to translate "I want an isle seat for my son and TIMMY STOP POKING YOUR SISTER, sorry, An isle seat for my son and I have a Delta flight from Dallas, can you make sure it will arrive in time to connect?" That's the kind of thing human attendants can cope with easily. The best kind of interface for ticketing is an unintelligent wizard on a touch screen with big icons and a "help" button for an attendant.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I don't give a damn about that. Please invest in much faster planes instead - I do care about being in that miserable sardin can for hours on end. By the way, those "breaktroughs" consisting of higher humidity and air pressure in the cabin, plus slightly larger windows - you know where you can stick them. Give us much faster flights at a reasonable price; the rest is just cosmetics.
The human is the weak link in the check in chain. The self check in terminals are fine, but fat lot of good it does when i still have to stand in a huge line just to have the human behind the desk put a sticker on my checked baggage. WTF is that about? weighing? certainly a scale could be present at the terminal, and until computer vision is reliable enough, a human could simply watch to make sure people arent just pretending to weigh their 80lbs luggage. Bombs? i thought that's what the TSA is for. Clearly the staff checking your ID is not the biggest stopgap in preventing bombs on board. Why can't the terminal simply spit out my baggage sticker for myself to put on?
Great. This is going to be like trying to talk to one of those software customer service reps on the phone: insanely inefficient. As long as there is nothing unusual about your checkin, existing kiosks work great. If there is something unusual, the fake human won't be able to handle it any better than a standard interface will, and you'll need a real human.
This is solely for the user of the illiterate who cannot use the check-in kiosks. I like that I can quickly read the screen, tap the appropriate button, and be on my way. Checking in will take a lot longer if I have to listen to a computer avatar ask me my questions.
I think that going through tree of discrete selections has a better solution in touchscreen than in glorified answer-phone system with space-wasting avatar visualisation.
Maybe they could prototype it first by putting terminals videoconferencing to live people which could not fully understand what you are telling them (certain offshore locations come into mind) and see how much it improves the passenger checkin quality. If it works perfectly, THEN they can solve problem of video lines by generating almost-human computer avatars. I have a feeling that people will prefer impersonal selections to videoconference...
When you replace people with computers you get a rigid and brittle process. That's OK if nothing ever goes wrong because no one will end up on the wrong side of that rigidity. But when there is opportunity for the process to go wrong then there absolutely must be fast and easy access to a skilled, experienced and empowered human for exception handling. We don't need fake rigid humans, we need real people who are capable of making good, customer-centric decisions.
Making the computer more pretty won't help, and just having a low-wage minder standing around won't help either.
A few minutes waiting for a kiosk to be available, couple of more minutes tapping the screen. Had the boarding pass and baggage claim ticket in hand. Then waited at least 15 minutes for a person to wander by and take the bag I had checked (for a $25 surcharge). Maybe the avatar will recognize the annoyance building and ping someone to come over.
So is this basically clippy for checkin terminals?
korben dallas multipass
Please explain technologies like this to these clowns: http://politics.slashdot.org/s...
"Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."
Remember those stickers on the registers at K-Mart, facing the cashier, with the letters, "TYFSOK"? It stands for, "Thank You For Shopping Our K-Mart." The sticker was to remind the beleagured minimum wage employee to recite the words. Did anyone, ever, feel that the person mechanically parroting that catch phrase actually cared? How about the greeters at Wal Mart? (I think they've pretty much gone away, like the TYFSOK stickers)
You can teach an automaton to mimick human emotion, but even when it is an actual human such mimickry is patronizing and irritating. If you want human warmth, hire warm humans (downside; warm humans who can keep their positive mental attitude while working at an airport are expensive and they need time to recover from their shifts).
If you are going to use computers, embrace their natural advantages. Computers are fast, predictable, and emotionless. Those can be good characteristics in a user interface -- particularly when the customer just wants to get the process finished and move on. Work with the entire industry to develop a standard interface and sequence so the user and bang through it without even engaging their brain -- everyone is better off with travellers on autopilot. Painting a computer in whore's makeup won't make it a lover for any but the most desperate.
And, for you air travellers, a quick question: Why are you still endorsing them? Why are you still agreeing to be subjected to the TSA and the awful customer service of the airlines? Have you really made all reasonable efforts to switch to alternatives? If you aren't making significant personal sacrifices to cut their cashflow, you are lending aid and comfort to the enemy. I've driven 6,000 miles in the past year avoiding air travel. What are you doing?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I check in online. When I get to the airport, why can't I just swipe my passport drop my bags on the conveyor and go on my way. Sometimes that works, but at least half the time while someone types the Oxford English Dictionary into a keyboard. I'm not changing flights. I'm doing exactly what my reservation, and online checkin said I was doing.
I don't want a human touch, I just want to get on my airplane.
On the occasions where I am doing something unusual, or where something goes wrong, an AI avatar is NOT going to be able to solve my problem.
Expect human reaction to computers pretending to be human to be angry and creped out.
When you do this you are essentially selling a lie to the customer even though it is clear machine is a machine and not a person the emulation of a person is still perceived as deception and therefore offensive.
If airlines feel compelled to waste their money on something other than reasonably usable kiosk terminals why not invest it to reverse multi-decades trend of making experience of flying as lame, oppressive and uncomfortable as possible?
"Sue me, d**khead!"
*Johnny Clerk electrocutes airline passenger*
"We hope you enjoyed the ride!"
I don't fly anymore, because I don't enjoy voluntary root canals, but ...
I went through an automated car wash recently, and instead of pushing a few buttons and swiping my card, I got to listen to a video of a cheerful smiling woman in a car (with her adorable "daughter" beside her!) explaining each step in painful marketese ... every time I did anything, she started over, talking (obliquely, tediously) about the new step I was on ... by the time I could actually drive into the car wash I was ready to rip out the screen and beat myself over the head with it.
If you are going to automate, then at least make it quick and efficient. If you want the human touch, use actual humans. (Well, just not that actual human, please.)
Check in kiosks are fine the way they are. If you want a human touch, just wait for the TSA security line. Of course, it will involve a Latex glove.
Have gnu, will travel.
Just when you think that customer service can't possibly get any more creepy, then you read this.
Australian Airline Jetstar, a Qantas subsidiary, is already doing this kind of thing, although I assume not as ambitiously. Jetstar's website provides an Avatar to assist passengers with use of the airline's website, including booking flights and accommodation. The Australian provider of the avatar software has been in business for quite a few years now. The available avatars are based on well known Australians.
I don't mind dealing with computers. I don't mind dealing with people. I hate dealing with computers that pretend to be people. "Wait a minute while I look that up for you." (pretend typing noise) NOOOOOO thanks. If people want a more human experience, they're saying they want actual humans, not computers that pretend to be humans.
That's exactly the same line of thinking that was (obviously!) ready to be spoofed decases ago!
Adding a "human touch" to something that should be easy as opening a door or using an elevator was what led the Sirius Cybernetics cooperation to develop Genuine people personalities.
bickerdyke
Patrick Teo, BCS CEO says. "Travelling can be stressful and our aim is to make the interaction between human (passenger) and computer (check-in) as natural and helpful as possible."
Translation, "AIML is less than Minimum Wage."
Translate that work being done on "intelligent" avatars into the real world and we'll get more "intelligent" RealDolls(tm). Fuck yeah!
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
> Yes we all want interactive terminals at the airport. We are not at all concerned about waiting 1 hour to checks bags, another hour to get through security and a third useful hour spent waiting to board. No, let's get hyper-aggressive about how the computer looks at the airport.
You UTTER moron. Why do you think people wait 1hr to check in bags? Come on, I'll wait for you to answer.
Why do you think people wait 1hr to go through security? Come on... waiting.
Why waiting to board? You arrived early?
Moron. The whole reason people take a lot of time to go through these human systems is price competition. People want cheaper tickets and the rows an rows of check-ins staffed with people to reduce the time taken costs money. If there was one check-in person and one security person per traveler at any one time, things would be quicker, sure, but more expensive.
How can you not decipher that?
So then you say you want things quicker, and decry the very FUCKING PROJECT that people are engineering to make it that way.
Airlines are run by morons, the booking systems written, designed and implemented by morons. The farce of getting to where we are now (book ticket, passbook, minimum fuss) is not something I am going to forget. AND IT IS PEOPLE LIKE YOU, i.e. MORONS, that made it such.
Because the systems were shit people had a hard time using self-checkin, or they were too expensive for the budget airlines etc. While I agree it would be better to have minimum cost, maximum usability system that let any idiot check in onboard, I am sure there are studies that show that people are so paralyzed by their own stupidity that we need to coddle them with avatars and other shit so they can make their way through a fucking airport.
Now STOP BEING A FUCKING MORON.
> WHAT'S THAT? THEY'RE DEVELOPING SOMETHING CALLED AN UMBRELLA? WTF PEOPLE WANT NOT GET WET IN THE RAIN NOT HAVE YET ANOTHER THING TO CARRY AROUND!
Moron
Can we please set some sort of standard for the vocabulary of artificial intelligence? Because I'm fairly certain that kiosk manufacturers "BCS" has not created a networked artificial intelligence just to help you decide if you want to upgrade to more leg room.
It's a set of video recordings set to play in response to input stimuli and complete actions in the background and nothing more. It's "smart".
I propose:
Intelligent -- Smart and Sentient.
Sentient -- For others to describe/debate.
Smart -- Capable of making complex decisions from multiple forms of input (sensory, data input, etc.). (A really good bot.)
Clever -- Capable of making decisions and acting on those decisions. (A bot.)
Terminal -- Capable of acting on commands. (An ATM.)