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iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

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Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#41

Post by sushumna »

Geee wrote: post #21
Robin_Message wrote: post #19

The demo isn't a virtual assistant. Its a glorified search engine with API integration and voice recognition. My vision of a virtual assistant is that you would be able to say: "Book dinner with Ross and David next week", and the only other interactions you have with the agent are "You're going to that Indian you and Ross like on Tuesday at 7" or "Can't be done, how about Monday the week after?", and possibly a messa…

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

Exactly!! When the control is given to VPAs, its gonna be a big mess. To some extent it may help. More over, user ends up conflicting with VPAs rather than getting things done. Then comes "tips for hacking VPAs". I feel speech-to-text with little intelligence should be good enough.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#42

Post by JonnieCache »

bambax wrote: post #36
spiralganglion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead? Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

Lots of people currently tour the world performing music that is partly algorithmic, where aspects of the performance are determined by (usually simple) AI algorithms. This is normal. The crowd doesn't know, and those that do know think it's cool.

When we get to the point where AI can make good music on its own without direction, we will have a lot bigger questions to worry about than the fate of musicians. It won't be a pressing issue.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#43

Post by robryan »

bambax wrote: post #36
spiralganglion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead? Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

How is that a different experience to listening to recorded music though? You could argue that new music could be generated on the fly but that isn't particularly exciting either, generally when a band plays something no one has heard before live it is a lot worse an experience than hearing the songs you know and love from the band.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#44

Post by sandGorgon »

revorad wrote: post #24
Robin_Message wrote: post #19

The demo isn't a virtual assistant. Its a glorified search engine with API integration and voice recognition. My vision of a virtual assistant is that you would be able to say: "Book dinner with Ross and David next week", and the only other interactions you have with the agent are "You're going to that Indian you and Ross like on Tuesday at 7" or "Can't be done, how about Monday the week after?", and possibly a messa…

"Book dinner with Ross and David next week." "I don't think you should meet Ross any more." "Why do you hate him so much?" "I don't hate anyone. I don't have feelings. I'm just predicting another fistfight based on your heartbeat charts from previous meetings. I've booked you in to see the psychiatrist for Wednesday." "I DIDN'T ask you to do that!" "Shouting is not good for you. Findings from a study published this m…

Funny, nobody responded with

I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I cant do that

I wonder how long before Asimov's three laws become a necessity...

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#46

Post by jules »

Geee wrote: post #21
Robin_Message wrote: post #19

The demo isn't a virtual assistant. Its a glorified search engine with API integration and voice recognition. My vision of a virtual assistant is that you would be able to say: "Book dinner with Ross and David next week", and the only other interactions you have with the agent are "You're going to that Indian you and Ross like on Tuesday at 7" or "Can't be done, how about Monday the week after?", and possibly a messa…

I'm waiting for the day when young people are non-functional in real world without their virtual assistants. :)

People are already non-functional in the real world. That is, a world without houses and supermarkets. A virtual assistant will not change the dependence on technology and society radically, it will only add to it a little.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#47

Post by rodh257 »

Kylekramer wrote: post #9

A lot of pie in the sky speculation based off a three year old talk there. Especially since I am sure an Apple acquisition wasn't on the road map at the time. But my answers to his questions would be: * Will Assistant be world-changing?* No. But it will probably be a damn good feature. Will it address foreign languages/cultures Probably, since Nuance can do a fairly impressive number of languages and all signs is App…

"I am sure Assistant be like most Apple features. Fairly impressive, a bit more detail oriented than the competition, but ultimately not that much better. If anything, I think it will be the new Facetime. Good demo, good for ads, some people will use it a bunch, but mostly a showy feature that will get used once and then ignored by the vast majority of users."

To me, this is exactly what it will be. Even if it does work a lot better than Android and Windows Phone 7, I can't imagine too many times where I'd be using it. I haven't used the voice features on my Android/WP7 devices very often, not because it doesn't work well enough, but because 99% of the time I use my phone I'm somewhere that I don't want to be saying commands out loud into my phone. They may solve the technical problem, but the social one will hold it back.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#48

Post by vga15 »

I wouldn't be so sure about state-of-the-art natural lang processing & speech recognition systems being good enough, for Apple (given their track record) to pitch a complete virtual assistant as a software service (VAAS?).

The ideal AI assistant would be entangled with copious amounts of machine learning algorithms. And it'd have to be plugged into my email, sms's, phone convos, facebook, twitter etc. The AI would have to evolve not just from my experiences, but the collective experiences of the ecosystem (privacy alert!).

There's way too many dangling variables here -- privacy implications, govt. regulation, software error (30%+ for state of the art natural language processing) etc.

Yet, I've gotta say I'm stupidly giddy about today's keynote.

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#49

Post by LiveTheDream »

JonnieCache wrote: post #42
bambax wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead? Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

Lots of people currently tour the world performing music that is partly algorithmic, where aspects of the performance are determined by (usually simple) AI algorithms. This is normal. The crowd doesn't know, and those that do know think it's cool. When we get to the point where AI can make good music on its own without direction, we will have a lot bigger questions to worry about than the fate of musicians. It won't…

Can you expand on this? Are you referring to something more complex than lights that flash with the beat of the music?

Re: iPhone 5 Keynote Predictions: Mainstreaming AI?

#50

Post by vga15 »

bambax wrote: post #36
spiralganglion wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting for the day when I can focus on more interesting problems than reserving hotel rooms in 10 cities, going back and forth with booking agents trying to figure out when I need to be in each city, or having to micromanage the fluctuating schedules of my band just to organize a rehearsal. I'd rather be playing music.

But what is to keep the virtual assistant from playing music in your stead? Doesn't get tired, doesn't get drunk, doesn't ask for money...

Absolutely. "Creativity as a service". I envision a lot of startups in the near future revolving around this model. Maybe we'll plug into a facebook-like universal AI-api (by apple?), and build 'creativity generator' apps that use chunks of hyper-personal data.

PG recently spoke about how, in the future, creativity would have to be 'generated'.(http://www.darrenherman.com/2011/09/14/ycombinator-ad-innova...)

Once early adopters tout about the variety that machines can generate, the rest will have to follow along.

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