Would having a conversation with a computer that was capable of understanding conversational english be awesome? I imagine it would be. But what would we talk about? What would I do with such a computer that I couldn't do with my current PC?
You are thinking too narrowly about "computers". I agree that talking to your desktop is largely inefficient compared to using a keyboard and mouse but natural language processing in robotics is another story.
The idea is that we may have hundreds of computers within our immediate environment all around us most of the time. See Intel's work on Claytronics http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/ and MIT's work in robotics http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/projects.html. These technologies will be miniaturized and have some degree of natural language processing. Since you are not necessarily siting down at a desk with a keyboard and mouse, one of the most convenient ways of communicating with them will be through speech, gestures and eventually thoughts. Emotive and others are already making good progress in the thoughts category. http://emotiv.com/
Yeah, that'd be awesome. but that's nowhere near being on the horizon yet, and I don't know that we'll ever get there, because where's the demand for the intermediary steps that would lead us there, and what would those intermediary steps even be??
There is indeed a great demand for first generation, speech enabled robots and embedded computers. Think of the money that can be made for a robot that cleans using even a very limited amount of AI. Add in some speech recognition and I bet someone from http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=2804605 would be very interested in talking with you.
Mod parent up. Silverlight is an incredible technology, and version 2.0 will be much more than a media distribution framework. Dot NET 3.5 and VS 2008 are impressive as well.
Microsoft deserves a lot of criticism in some areas (Vista, IE, and their overall business practices to name a few) but the development groups are releasing innovative products. Check out LINQ, the Dynamic Language Runtime and new C# language features for a start.
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Would having a conversation with a computer that was capable of understanding conversational english be awesome? I imagine it would be. But what would we talk about? What would I do with such a computer that I couldn't do with my current PC?
You are thinking too narrowly about "computers". I agree that talking to your desktop is largely inefficient compared to using a keyboard and mouse but natural language processing in robotics is another story.
The idea is that we may have hundreds of computers within our immediate environment all around us most of the time. See Intel's work on Claytronics http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/ and MIT's work in robotics http://robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/projects.html. These technologies will be miniaturized and have some degree of natural language processing. Since you are not necessarily siting down at a desk with a keyboard and mouse, one of the most convenient ways of communicating with them will be through speech, gestures and eventually thoughts. Emotive and others are already making good progress in the thoughts category. http://emotiv.com/
Yeah, that'd be awesome. but that's nowhere near being on the horizon yet, and I don't know that we'll ever get there, because where's the demand for the intermediary steps that would lead us there, and what would those intermediary steps even be??
There is indeed a great demand for first generation, speech enabled robots and embedded computers. Think of the money that can be made for a robot that cleans using even a very limited amount of AI. Add in some speech recognition and I bet someone from http://store.irobot.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=2804605 would be very interested in talking with you.
Mod parent up. Silverlight is an incredible technology, and version 2.0 will be much more than a media distribution framework. Dot NET 3.5 and VS 2008 are impressive as well. Microsoft deserves a lot of criticism in some areas (Vista, IE, and their overall business practices to name a few) but the development groups are releasing innovative products. Check out LINQ, the Dynamic Language Runtime and new C# language features for a start.