Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#1

Post by hsikka » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

I was rewatching movies in preparation for the new Marvel movie, and I felt some nostalgia and childhood fascination when I saw the depiction of Jarvis in the Ironman movies.

I work in ML research and am currently in graduate school, and I know we're nowhere near real intelligence. But some of those features, question generation, voice commands, object detection, image reconstruction, and others are certainly doable.

Do you think we could build something starting to approach Jarvis in 2019, at least in function i.e. helping your everyday work?

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#2

Post by setquk » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

Siri is still half deaf and tries to send me to the chip shop when I ask it to send a message and they have a ridiculous amount of budget behind that so probably not.

At the moment our technology is like Zorg’s desk in Fifth Element. Stuffed full of toys but ultimately will let you down too often to be relied upon.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#3

Post by ovi256 » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

You could probably get 90% of the utility with a janky collection of shell scripts fronted by a voice recognition engine. Think Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri/etc with a bunch of company- or task- specific scripts. I purposefully ignore the robot-arm in an open universe capability, because that's still too far away, AFAIK.

Jarvis in the movie was Hollywood smooth: made to look great in a movie. Even the goofs were great, and it behaved like a puppy, to be likable to the audience. You don't need that in a work assistant. But if you remove that, plus the robot-arm, you're left with a voice controlled Outlook assistant, which is useful, but not sexy.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#4

Post by overcode » Thu, May 02, 2019, 8:55 AM UTC

If we could, we would have. But we haven't, so we can't.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#5

Post by threeseed » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:03 AM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #3

You could probably get 90% of the utility with a janky collection of shell scripts fronted by a voice recognition engine. Think Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri/etc with a bunch of company- or task- specific scripts. I purposefully ignore the robot-arm in an open universe capability, because that's still too far away, AFAIK. Jarvis in the movie was Hollywood smooth: made to look great in a movie. Even the goofs were great…

Actually you could've built Alexa/Siri etc back in 1997 with DragonDictate and a whole bunch of scripting.

And in many areas it would've been just as good as what we have today.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#6

Post by hereiskkb » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:08 AM UTC

overcode wrote: post #4

If we could, we would have. But we haven't, so we can't.

This is some oversimplified bullshit.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#7

Post by ratsimihah » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:11 AM UTC

hereiskkb wrote: post #6

overcode wrote: post #4

If we could, we would have. But we haven't, so we can't.

This is some oversimplified bullshit.

Like e = mc^2?

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#8

Post by new_guy » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:14 AM UTC

Sure you can. Services like Alexa are just glorified paperweights and aren't reflective of real world capabilities.

If you want to build your own Jarvis, don't listen to anyone else just get stuck in. You'll be surprised just how far you can get with it.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#9

Post by vSanjo » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:16 AM UTC

ovi256 wrote: post #3

You could probably get 90% of the utility with a janky collection of shell scripts fronted by a voice recognition engine. Think Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri/etc with a bunch of company- or task- specific scripts. I purposefully ignore the robot-arm in an open universe capability, because that's still too far away, AFAIK. Jarvis in the movie was Hollywood smooth: made to look great in a movie. Even the goofs were great…

I completely agree.

A friend once said all we need is 'the sinew between the questions'. Connecting them (contexts, intents, etc) and making it close to 1.0 probability on decisions through the entire conversation.

I think the 'marble rock' of Jarvis is there already, and with ML/AI we can likely make it 'David-shaped' but the refinement, 'warmth' and complexity of Jarvis is man-hours that would likely be better spent elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech?

#10

Post by kaybe » Thu, May 02, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

new_guy wrote: post #8

Sure you can. Services like Alexa are just glorified paperweights and aren't reflective of real world capabilities. If you want to build your own Jarvis, don't listen to anyone else just get stuck in. You'll be surprised just how far you can get with it.

You could also build on top of one of the open source versions, eg Mycroft.

https://mycroft.ai/