EmoSpark AI Console

[Cognisant]

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/emospark-first-a-i-home-console

Seems like Siri, I think it's interesting to see AI development moving towards entertainment like this as opposed to more intelligent FPS bots but unfortunately I don't think this'll take off, they'd be better off reinventing the Furbie.

 

[Architect]

It's at least a decade too early. Probably a classifier system with a database behind it, which if true (or even if not) will show it's limitations quickly. Somewhere around 2025 would be when we'd expect to see something like this.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

The more demanding you are, the more you will have to wait for an A.I that will provide and understand everything you need.

 

[Architect]

The more demanding you are, the more you will have to wait for an A.I that will provide and understand everything you need.

Our best A.I techniques are only partially good at syntactic understanding, and not at all at semantic understanding. This is why they are reasonably good at intellectual activities like voice recognition (99%+ is easily achievable with a proper microphone, training and good diction) and image recognition using probabilistic graphical models. Without the semantic understanding when these systems fail they do so spectacularly, examples are easily found using your cell phone's voice recognition system.

For emotional communication and understanding syntactic communication is necessary but not sufficient, semantic understanding is required. Consider the difference between

"I have to go to the store"

and

"I have to go to the store"

Nobody knows how to teach a machine semantic understanding yet, so I'm wondering what exactly these guys are selling.

 

[Hawkeye]

For emotional communication and understanding syntactic communication is necessary but not sufficient, semantic understanding is required. Consider the difference between

"I have to go to the store"

and

"I have to go to the store"

Nobody knows how to teach a machine semantic understanding yet, so I'm wondering what exactly these guys are selling.

Isn't that just intonation and stress patterns?

I suppose this concept breaks down in countries such as Japan that don't rely on stress patterns to change the meaning of words.

It also breaks down in Australia where everything sounds like a fecking question... ^^

 

[Cognisant]

Nobody knows how to teach a machine semantic understanding yet, so I'm wondering what exactly these guys are selling.

I see it as Siri+Furbie, a language interpretation program like Dragon coupled with a procedural AI designed to give the illusion of intelligence, except Furbie worked really well because the increasing number and complexity of the sounds it made gave a convincing illusion of an intelligence developing over time whereas with the EmoSpark we've seen everything it can do by the end of the promotional video.

 

[Melkor]

I think I'll get one of these, attempt to condition it into believing I desire misery and suffering, and then give it someone as a gift.

Pity this is probably 800% less impressive and responsive than it sounds. -_-