Siri is the Next Big Thing

Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by zipdog on Friday October 14, 2011 @09:38AM (#3111092)

It's interesting that the Printing Press didn't make the list of previous revolutions, because I think this highlights two different ways of thinking about intelligence (and thus AI). We can either build AI systems that give us a correct answer 95% of the time and we don't care how they got it, or we can build systems that have some sort of designed thinking (ie we understand our own thoughts and try and replicate their process to some degree).

I think at some point the former became dominant, because its more achieveable, but its also the one that gets most interesting when it fails. Because of the way this AI learns, when its wrong it can be brutally wrong.

I think there will be a revolution in AI getting into more spaces, but only in areas where its ok to screw up (ie ultimately a human is filtering the AI response at some degree, whether its the user knowing when to ignore the GPS or Siri, or an overseer looking over the AI output and checking it before it goes out). I'd be really surprised to see AI doing anything important by itself.

Also, I thought Google already had a fairly solid AI research effort well underway.

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by yalimgerger on Friday October 14, 2011 @09:49AM (#3111134)

Hi, Author here. I think you make an excellent point. I think the revolution will start from small things where it is OK to make an error. Stuff like Siri does. Then it will move on to productivity tools or the like...where it is still OK to make a mistake. And A.I. will improve really fast, like the PC has improved. I think in 5-10 years we won't believe what we have accomplished. I think Siri crosses an important threshold.

Didn't know about Google. They might be working on something but I don't know of any production use of their A.I. software.

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by helton on Friday October 14, 2011 @10:00AM (#3111179)

Google Translate uses AI. It uses currently translated text to predict translation of strings that you provide.

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by yalimgerger on Friday October 14, 2011 @10:03AM (#3111195)

True. Thank you for pointing that out. I missed it.

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by uniclaude on Saturday October 15, 2011 @01:53AM (#3114182)

Google uses AI for the Priority Inbox functionality of Gmail. It also seems that AI & machine learning are used for displaying ads, see [1].

[1]:http://www.quora.com/Why-is-machine-learning-used-heavily-fo...

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by ippisl on Friday October 14, 2011 @12:20PM (#3111759)

How do you judge a new medicine? do you ask if does the correct things 100% of the time? or do you just want it to be better than the other drugs ?

I think the same logic applies to other technologies: products generally have to pass the standard safety tests/level common in their industry, not be perfect.

Will this too happen in AI ? maybe , but maybe due to political pressure , the standards require from AI will be much higher.

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Re:Siri is the Next Big Thing by zipdog on Sunday October 16, 2011 @03:28PM (#3118064)

Well medicine's come with error bars, typically in the form of a doctor who determines whether the promised benefit plus risk is worthwhile for you. Often this is in conjunction with a consultation with the patient. So the general point that we don't give control to other entities that can make mistakes, I thnk still holds.

But you're right in the general sense: there are other areas where we leave the interpretation of the AI (as it were) to experts and have no say in it ourselves. Road bridges would be the simplest example I can think of (given that the safety simulations are akin to a simple form of AI).

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