Nabaztag / Violet |
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Nabaztag robotic rabbits like these are being adapted by the Companions Project
for an experiment aimed at creating long-term conversational partners.
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How many of you have a special friend who's known you for decades ... who can recall all your triumphs and foibles ... who knows you so well that he (or she) can tell you what you need to hear when nobody else will do it? That special someone may well be a standard feature in the lives of future generations - and it may well take the form of an ankle-high robotic bunny.
At least that's one of the concepts that the Companions Project is working with as it tries to develop computerized language systems that are good enough to keep up their end of a conversation. In a classic case of life imitating Hollywood, NASA is already working on computerized conversational assistants for astronauts. (Imagine this future space odyssey: "Dave? This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. Goodbye ..."). The Pentagon, meanwhile, has been funding a similar project. (Did I see that in "The Terminator" or "The Matrix"?)
Yorick Wilks, who is a researcher at the University of Sheffield in England and director of the Companions Project, says such systems could eventually serve here on Earth as long-term life coaches who never forget what you've done or where you've been (unless you want them to).
Scientists have been working on "chatterbots" since the dawn of the computer age, as exemplified by such experiments as ELIZA and PARRY. In this week's issue of the journal Science, Wilks provides an update on the state of the art. The bottom line? In most cases, the technology is "still not accurate enough to build a reliable machine partner capable of understanding what we say," Wilks reports. But just you wait.
Wilks and his colleagues are working on a couple of experiments to develop conversational software agents that are good enough to keep humans engaged for the long haul. We already occasionally deal with such agents, of course, when we call directory assistance, or check an airline reservation, or order a pizza. But these next-generation agents would be more like companions than clerks.
"The key feature that links all the companions is that they're agents that remember who you are," Wilks told me. "Your companion is for you, and it knows who you are, and it will stay with you for decades. This concept is going to become stronger and more powerful."
Enter the rabbit
Here's where the bunny hops into the picture. One of the Companions experiments involves the Nabaztag robotic rabbit - a wireless Internet contraption that can speak, move its ears and flash its lights in response to user inputs. Researchers have hacked the rabbit for speech recognition as well, with the aim of creating a specialized companion - for example, a personal health and fitness trainer.
The robo-rabbit could conceivably check your vital signs, listen to you talk about your eating habits and exercise routine, judge your mood and make suggestions or offer encouragement. The trainer wouldn't have to be a rabbit - it could take the form of a disembodied voice on a mobile phone, or an avatar on a computer screen.
AsAnAngel |
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A virtual avatar with a
bouffant hairdo helps
senior citizens reminisce in
one of the Companions Project's experiments.
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In fact, Wilks said another experiment uses a virtual avatar to chat with senior citizens in Scotland. "We're using a nice head that comes from the French telephone company," Wilks told me. "It's a nice, bouffant-haired French lady."
The aim of the experiment is to draw out details about the ups and downs of the seniors' lives, and link those stories with personal photos to create an enduring electronic legacy.
"We're looking at old people reminiscing about their lives and building up a narrative by talking to a machine - a kind of organized reminiscence," Wilks explained.
You could have virtual companions for different areas of your life, just as you have different people nowadays to handle your finances, arrange your daily schedule and offer a sympathetic ear. "To be honest, if this kind of technology works, there'll be companions for every possible application," Wilks said.
In fact, other researchers have speculated that robots could well make inroads in the sex-and-marriage realm. Although Wilks said the idea is not "totally serious," there's at least a germ of truth to it. Even today, the Nabaztag robo-rabbit is occasionally put to an amorous application, he noted.
"We have long-distance lovers keeping in contact over it," Wilks said.
What will it take?
Looking ahead, researchers are trying to figure out exactly what it will take to get to a natural-language nirvana. Is it just a question of building up a huge database of queries and responses? That's a brute-force approach to the challenge of conversation, analogous to the way computers came to outdo humans at checkers and chess. But Wilks believes it will take something more: Computers also will have to absorb the linguistic structures that humans use, through automated learning.
"That might be closer to what our own cognitive structures seem to be," Wilks wrote in his Science report.
Based on researchers' experience with speech recognition, the chances are good that machines will eventually become adequate conversationalists, if we let them, Wilks said. "Twenty or 30 years ago, the idea of computerized recognition of speech was a dream. Now it's really not bad," Wilks said.
In fact, Wilks wonders why we don't have more chatterbots in our lives already. For instance, he's puzzled over the lack of bank machines that could chat with you about cashing a check or paying your bills.
"If I was a good entrepreneur, I'd have a go at it myself," he told me. "But I'm not. I'm a lab rat."
Would you have a go at it? Would you strike up a conversation with a bankbot, or a trainerbot, or a lifelong virtual companion? Going a bit further, are you game to have robots call the shots, or would your first instinct be to flee the robot uprising? Either way, feel free to add your comments below.
