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M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

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Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#141

Post by Apocryphon »

swalsh wrote: post #34

I want Amazon to build a personal digital assistant, and then integrate it into filters. Today I was searching for socks, I care about 3 things, the size, the color, and whether they go up to the ankle or not. It seems like information they probably have (or a well trained net could figure out), so it would be nice if it was offered as a filter. A few weeks ago I was trying to find toys for my son. I was most interes…

I wonder if Amazon leverages all of the human involvement in Mechanical Turk for any machine learning.

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#142

Post by rybosome »

jhgg wrote: post #115

Very interesting that the human trainers are being used to train the AI to eventually do their jobs.

Jeremy Howard[0] gave a TED talk[1] in which he predicted that this would be a short-term trend, where labelling data for AI will be an easy way to get a job for a few years. He predicts that this will drop off as enough labelled data is provided. I think this fails to consider that our expectations of AI will increase along with our ability to manipulate increasingly large amounts of data, so we will begin labelling increasingly complex data.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Howard_(entrepreneur) [1]: http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_ter...

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#143

Post by shostack »

pbreit wrote: post #121
tsurantino wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial example is broad, but can't this just be extended with additional questions? For example, can you tell me about dinner options that cost less than $20 per person. What are other people saying? How far away is this? It's questionable whether each of these follow up questions is actually that complex. I think you are arguing that things get hard if a user tries to put that together in one single complex que…

If you look at Amazon Echo, the stuff that works is pretty specific: Set timer for 5 minutes Add eggs to shopping list Play Clocks by Coldplay Weather

Don't have an Echo and have never ordered groceries so not sure how they solve this one, but taking the example of "Add eggs to shopping list"...how do they handle brand options with general queries like that? Are there brand options?

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#144

Post by unabst »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #138
unabst wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI researchers and engineers tend to get too carried away with decision making, when the more valuable service is about communication of refined knowledge, which if I'm not mistaken is exactly your point. The problem has nothing to do with "how can a machine guess the right answer" but instead is all about "how can a machine refine all the options based on the intentions expressed thus far". Anecdotally, if w…

If I ask someone I know what's a good place to eat, the odds are actually quite high that I'll give it a try. I wouldn't have asked otherwise. The issue here is one of trust, which is built on an individualized relationship over time. When I ask someone I know for a recommendation, I'm doing so because I already have a sense of their judgment. That's more the key here- build a history of reliable judgment. That's the…

> history of reliable judgment

Right. This is certainly one path and the path most seem to be on, and exactly the one that needs to be challenged. The key intuition here being that a judgement, which is a decision, is not an answer to a logical problem. A decision entails a will, and when our personal will is overridden by an animated paperclip, we close said program. Decision != Answer.

People don't necessarily want decisions made for them, but rather, they want assistance in making their own, or better yet, reasons to justify the decisions they've already tentatively made. "Reliable judgement" is the complete opposite of "a resource of intelligence". Certainly all of these assistants feature a little bit of both, but I keep sensing the urge towards the former. Worse yet, a decision is often treated as an abstraction that somehow justifies hiding everything that went into that decision, even though there is immense value in actually being told why. People have entire conversations over why to eat at some place as part of the process of sharing the decision to go there.

Even when used only as a resource, if only these robots wouldn't keep trying to read our minds or insist on telling us what to do. Maybe a handful of people will accept a robot's choice, but everyone loves more information.

Maybe we shouldn't be looking for some secret sauce that enables robots to make better generalized and rational decisions than humans. Maybe we should be building robots capable of assisting humans at better making their own personal and irrational decisions instead?

(edited for grammar)

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#145

Post by shard »

dragonwriter wrote: post #131
unabst wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI researchers and engineers tend to get too carried away with decision making, when the more valuable service is about communication of refined knowledge, which if I'm not mistaken is exactly your point. The problem has nothing to do with "how can a machine guess the right answer" but instead is all about "how can a machine refine all the options based on the intentions expressed thus far". Anecdotally, if w…

> Is it a glitch in the Matrix or is their pitch for Cortana identical? No, its not a glitch that Siri, Google Now, Cortana, and now M have essentially the same pitch -- they are direct competitors intended to attach people to their respective platforms.

I think unabst is asking why the pitch for Cortana is similar to Microsoft Office's paperclip, which was a much ridiculed failure.

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#147

Post by bla2 »

The cycle of software life:

1. Motivated team in a larger company builds new, cool product (in this case Messenger) 2. It's good and becomes successful 3. The rest of the company wants to get in on that, think of ways to add value 4. A bunch of stuff gets bundled, some good, most bad 5. Some of the original team stay around, most get disillusioned and go work on something else 6. Eventually, the app becomes another iTunes

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#148

Post by lenomad »

uptown wrote: post #128
piyush_soni wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, for example, one of those who is very active on FB both through Desktop and their Mobile App, but do not use their Messenger app since they separated it from the main app. I also don't intend to install it unless they add something amazing value added to its simple messaging. What is infuriating that they download all the messages on my phone even when I don't have messenger installed, but force me to install anot…

You can use Paper to access messages if you are willing to install Paper.

What's Paper?

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#149

Post by andyl »

mildbow wrote: post #129
andyl wrote: post #118

What is the best alternative to Wit.ai, now that they have been consumed by Facebook??

Why do you want an alternative?[0] Afaik, they haven't been shut down. It's actually even free now. [0] not that it's a bad thing, but wondering it's more than just "facebook bought it". Funny as it is, I trust that companies will go on when facebook buys them as opposed to google or amazon.

Heck - you are right! Brought up wit.ai earlier today and it rendered a blank page - thought they had been shuttered. But now I can see the full site and the service looks stronger than ever.

Re: M, a personal digital assistant inside Facebook Messenger

#150

Post by goldfeld »

shostack wrote: post #143
pbreit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at Amazon Echo, the stuff that works is pretty specific: Set timer for 5 minutes Add eggs to shopping list Play Clocks by Coldplay Weather

Don't have an Echo and have never ordered groceries so not sure how they solve this one, but taking the example of "Add eggs to shopping list"...how do they handle brand options with general queries like that? Are there brand options?

For Amazon I guess it would be trivial to choose based on what you tend to buy.
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