In 1996 I attended the IROS robotics conference in Osaka, Japan as part of a group of grad student robotics researchers. We toured the robotics labs at Tokyo University (Todai). There were a lot of student projects in humanoid robots.
Here's a video of a recent humanoid robot project. It's similar to the student projects I saw, but a bit more advanced. Aiko can read (apparently) and visually track objects, react to touch, and process some natural language. Note the command language the inventor uses to control the robot: "Aiko, Japanese mode." "Aiko, trace object." These are verbal equivalents to pushing buttons on a control panel.
The entire effect of the lifelike mask, loud mechanical motors whirring, and stilted conversation is a little creepy. I think this demo is relevant to the "Uncanny Valley" hypothesis. I know it's a popular idea, that if we make our machines more "lifelike" then people will trust them and accept them, but I'm not seeing any evidence for that. I mean, look how things turned out in Blade Runner.
Showing posts with label Blade Runner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blade Runner. Show all posts
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
All of our computers are assisting other customers...
Ray Kurzweil is an innovative thinker and inventor who has gotten a lot of attention for his wild predictions about the future of technology. Here's a link to a story with some of his predictions (Thanks to Ahmed Bouzid for pointing out this article). Kurzweil gets a hearing because he's delivered some real cutting edge technology with his work on optical character recognition and automatic speech recognition.
So, what are the implications for speech-enabled IVRs if, as Kurzweil predicts, computers become smarter than humans? It isn't hard to imagine the following Blade Runner-like scenario.
[Customer calls a company and reaches a human customer service rep]
So, what are the implications for speech-enabled IVRs if, as Kurzweil predicts, computers become smarter than humans? It isn't hard to imagine the following Blade Runner-like scenario.
[Customer calls a company and reaches a human customer service rep]
- CSR: "All of our computers are currently assisting other customers. If you'd like, I can try to help you. Otherwise, please remain on the line for the next available computer."
- Caller: "NO! Please, just let me talk to a MACHINE!"
Ha ha. We voice interface designers enjoy our little jokes. Seriously, though, people really get bent out of shape when discussing machine intelligence. I think it violates peoples' sense of specialness to have their intellect compared to a computer's. In any case, predictions by Kurzweil and others about the future of technology are great topics for conversation, so long as one keeps things in perspective.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Deckard's Rules for VUI Development
In my last post I raved about the great science fiction movie Blade Runner. Based on the some of the issues raised in the movie, I'd like to propose (only partly in jest) Deckard's Rules for VUI Development. The rules are named for the character Deckard rather than Tyrell because (1) Tyrell got it wrong and (2) Deckard had to clean up the mess.
Rule 1: Don't over-engineer your system
Replicants Roy and Leon were built as fighters, presumably to protect property on off-world colonies. They were also created smarter and stronger than humans, and could pass for humans on Earth. Is it a good idea to build autonomous agents that are smarter and stronger than you and give them the capacity and motive to kill? No. It's a bad idea. Build your VUI system to do what its users need it to do and nothing more. And don't try to build something that could pass for a human.
Corollary to Rule 1: Keep your eye on the ROI
The technically sophisticated replicants were designed to self destruct after four years on fears that they could develop uncontrollable feelings and emotions if allowed to live any longer. Replacing advanced technology is extremely expensive - better to build your system to last, and maintain it as needed.
Rule 2: Words are powerful shapers of behavior - be brief and to the point
Deckard and Sebastian were manipulated into doing what others wanted them to do; Deckard into chasing replicants and Sebastian into setting a meeting between Roy and Tyrell. The dialogs required to do this were terse but gave sufficient direction to the targets that they understood what needed to be done. Good VUI dialogs are short and give users direction on what they need to say, without resorting to the painful "In order to do x, say x" construction.
Rule 3: Our methods for evaluating advanced technology isn't good enough - we need better tools
The Voight-Kampff test for determining whether a subject was replicant or human was nearly obsolete. It took Deckard, a trained evaluator, 100 questions to determine Rachael's identity. Our evaluation methods for VUIs are in a similar state. We still mostly rely on usability testing and questionnaires that were developed to evaluate web pages and GUIs. I gave a presentation at a UPA workshop in 2002 and pointed out that our old usability test protocols aren't sufficient for evaluating things like autonomous agents and speech systems. We need better evaluation methods.
Rule 1: Don't over-engineer your system
Replicants Roy and Leon were built as fighters, presumably to protect property on off-world colonies. They were also created smarter and stronger than humans, and could pass for humans on Earth. Is it a good idea to build autonomous agents that are smarter and stronger than you and give them the capacity and motive to kill? No. It's a bad idea. Build your VUI system to do what its users need it to do and nothing more. And don't try to build something that could pass for a human.
Corollary to Rule 1: Keep your eye on the ROI
The technically sophisticated replicants were designed to self destruct after four years on fears that they could develop uncontrollable feelings and emotions if allowed to live any longer. Replacing advanced technology is extremely expensive - better to build your system to last, and maintain it as needed.
Rule 2: Words are powerful shapers of behavior - be brief and to the point
Deckard and Sebastian were manipulated into doing what others wanted them to do; Deckard into chasing replicants and Sebastian into setting a meeting between Roy and Tyrell. The dialogs required to do this were terse but gave sufficient direction to the targets that they understood what needed to be done. Good VUI dialogs are short and give users direction on what they need to say, without resorting to the painful "In order to do x, say x" construction.
Rule 3: Our methods for evaluating advanced technology isn't good enough - we need better tools
The Voight-Kampff test for determining whether a subject was replicant or human was nearly obsolete. It took Deckard, a trained evaluator, 100 questions to determine Rachael's identity. Our evaluation methods for VUIs are in a similar state. We still mostly rely on usability testing and questionnaires that were developed to evaluate web pages and GUIs. I gave a presentation at a UPA workshop in 2002 and pointed out that our old usability test protocols aren't sufficient for evaluating things like autonomous agents and speech systems. We need better evaluation methods.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Blade Runner: Director's Cut
I watched the 1982 movie Blade Runner the other night. I think it's one of the great science fiction movies of all time, but don't take my word for it, check out the online reviews. In the world of the future, dangerous work on other planets is done by "replicants," near-human artificial beings; they form an exploited class. Harrison Ford is a detective who must chase and destroy some replicants who have travelled back to earth in order to escape their enslavement. How near the replicants are to humans is one of the main concerns of the movie. The movie re-visits, with a little twist, one of the oldest arguments in artificial intelligence: if a machine demonstrates behaviors that in a human would be acknowledged as "intelligent," can we call the machine intelligent? A lot of philosophers insist that "no," intelligence is the property of humans only, and intelligence can reside only in things that think with wetware, or biological brains. Computers think with silicon and wires and thus can never be considered intelligent.
The little twist introduced in the movie is not over the replicants' supposed intelligence. The replicants clearly are intelligent. The movie even tweaks an old AI argument in one scene when one of the replicants beats its creator in chess. At one time it was said that machines could never play a good game of chess because chess requires insight and intuition, those very high level forms of intelligence, that machines could never possess. What's more, machines can only do what you program them to do, so how can you program something that's better than yourself? Of course, that argument has been settled pretty decisively.
Instead, the movie explores the idea of whether the artificial beings are capable of emotion and feeling. The replicants show a great range of emotion: anger and cunning, loyalty, sadness at the death of one of their group, resentment over the treatment of others in their class, and fear over their impending deaths. In fact, they demonstrate far more emotion than the humans in the movie. Harrison Ford's character is a tough guy detective type who drinks in order to suppress his emotions. His employer shows little concern for him despite his poor condition.
So, the question. If the replicants display what appears to humans as emotion, are they really feeling emotion? If so, do we need to be concerned over their exploitation? Were the replicants emotions something that they were programmed to display, or was this a side effect of having made them so complex? Lots of interesting questions, with no answers forthcoming in the movie. Certainly Ford's detective was affected by the replicants. He feels physically ill at having destroyed one, and it's suggested that the demands of the job are one of the reasons he drinks so much. By the end of the movie, one's sympathies are with the exploited replicants.
What does this have to do with VUI? Besides the obvious fact that the replicants have astonishing speech recognition capabilities (there's not a single "Sorry, I didn't understand" in the whole movie) there may be lessons for those who concern themselves with the design of the VUIs persona. I'll discuss the lessons in my next posting.
The little twist introduced in the movie is not over the replicants' supposed intelligence. The replicants clearly are intelligent. The movie even tweaks an old AI argument in one scene when one of the replicants beats its creator in chess. At one time it was said that machines could never play a good game of chess because chess requires insight and intuition, those very high level forms of intelligence, that machines could never possess. What's more, machines can only do what you program them to do, so how can you program something that's better than yourself? Of course, that argument has been settled pretty decisively.
Instead, the movie explores the idea of whether the artificial beings are capable of emotion and feeling. The replicants show a great range of emotion: anger and cunning, loyalty, sadness at the death of one of their group, resentment over the treatment of others in their class, and fear over their impending deaths. In fact, they demonstrate far more emotion than the humans in the movie. Harrison Ford's character is a tough guy detective type who drinks in order to suppress his emotions. His employer shows little concern for him despite his poor condition.
So, the question. If the replicants display what appears to humans as emotion, are they really feeling emotion? If so, do we need to be concerned over their exploitation? Were the replicants emotions something that they were programmed to display, or was this a side effect of having made them so complex? Lots of interesting questions, with no answers forthcoming in the movie. Certainly Ford's detective was affected by the replicants. He feels physically ill at having destroyed one, and it's suggested that the demands of the job are one of the reasons he drinks so much. By the end of the movie, one's sympathies are with the exploited replicants.
What does this have to do with VUI? Besides the obvious fact that the replicants have astonishing speech recognition capabilities (there's not a single "Sorry, I didn't understand" in the whole movie) there may be lessons for those who concern themselves with the design of the VUIs persona. I'll discuss the lessons in my next posting.
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