[IxDA Discuss] People to People (mediated by technology) IxD - study by Motorola

[Jeff Axup]

I think it's worth noting that this conversation is a little vague when it
comes to defining what AI is. I agree with one of the previous posts that
it's a term probably better not used.

There's kind of two camps on AI:
- the "it's failed and we wasted a lot of time and money on it" camp, and
the
- "it's succeeded and you see it all around you" camp.

At least based on the original concepts of creating 'artificial
intelligences' equal to or surpassing our own, it has failed. Doing that may
be possible, but it is far more complex than previously understood. Most AI
as I understand it has migrated into "complex systems" design, and much of
that claims to be "intelligent" software now. Some complex systems are
certainly able to handle some amazing coordination and processing tasks
better than humans. Some of those system will replace humans who did
previously algorithmic tasks, but that has been going on for a long time
(just look at the traffic light as an example of human replacement).

So, yes, software is getting more complex. And the UIs for that may be
different, or if it takes the form of automation, it may result in simpler
UIs.

So possibly it would be useful to re-frame the conversation away from AI or
'intelligence' and discuss how to control software/technology which has a
degree more autonomy than it used to.

Example:

My iRobot is a strange little thing. It auto-starts at a given time, which
can either be excellent when I'm not home, or immensely annoying if I'm home
and watching a movie. It has WAY more autonomy (and potential for
misbehavior) than a normal vacuum. It gets itself into trouble, hiding under
beds and sucking up socks. It even dumped my recycling bin out on the floor
once and spread it around the apt. It is a dumb little machine, but I love
it because it normally does what I need it to do and saves me from having to
do it. But how should we be able to control it? What should interaction with
a robot or agent be like?

-Jeff


On 6/30/07, pauric <radiorental at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Again thanks Jon, another pointer for anyone in doubt of 'ai' is the
> work of Stephen Thaler
> http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6464697696665901632&hl=en
> 14 minutes in to this sometimes kooky documentary on the singularity
> is a working example of music scores from a machine created from
> analysing popular hits.
>
> >From the Frontmind article you linked to: "Specifically, we've seen
> that there's a high degree of communication among agent communities
> in FrontMind. The whole system is designed such that it creates a
> federation of agents in which all the different agent communities
> speak the same language (based on DOM and an XML dialect), while
> specializing in very different tasks."
>
> I would think that the federated agents might be facilitated by the
> forthcoming Metaweb??
>
> In most of the articles linked in this tread there's a recurring
> statement.. ai's/agents or what ever you want to call them have
> arrived en masse in stealth.  Again, I feel there's huge scope in
> designing how we will interact with smart agents.  As you point out,
> it wont be a traditional direct human-machine contact facilitating
> human-human interactions.  I'm postulating it will require a degree
> of anthropomorphism with some 'core animation' baked in at the
> presentation layer.
>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
> Posted from the new ixda.org
> http://beta.ixda.org/discuss?post=17736
>
>
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-- 
Thanks,
Jeff
____________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Axup, Ph.D.
Principal Consultant, Mobile Community Design Consulting, San Diego

Research:    Mobile Group Research Methods, Social Networks, Group Usability
E-mail:        axup <at> userdesign.com
Blog:           http://mobilecommunitydesign.com
Moblog:       http://memeaddict.blogspot.com
____________________________________________________________________________