Re: [NTLK] Newton History

From: Joel M. Sciamma <joel_at_inventors-emporium.co.uk>
Date: Sat Feb 21 2009 - 14:04:46 EST

Ryan said:

> This, of course, adversely affects an AI driven computer's ability
> to predict things, and respond meaningfully. At best a computer
> operates in a very rudimentary ad hoc fashion.

I think there are many ways in which very small amounts of AI can
still move us on a long way. The KN does some simple things that the
Newt can easily do with the Assistant but also the very hard things
that depend on context dependent language skills.

Right now, I appreciate software that tries to anticipate my next
move and has a rudimentary context awareness and a bit of learning.
Most software does neither but the Newton is craftily good just
though intelligent design.

Turn the AI dimmer switch just a little higher and the computer
begins to set things up in the background for you on the basis of
your normal working patterns, just in case you go that way. My
outliner should begin to recognise that I usually print documents
from a certain template and not others and get things set up so that
when I do print, all the settings are how I like them in that
instance without me having to tediously spell it out every time.

If the machine noticed that I was copying data from one document to
another, it might arrange the windows to make it easier,
automatically switch to the other window after the fourth or fifth
copy command, notice that I am always pasting without styles and
start to do that etc.

All the routine little things that you have do over and over are
perfectly possible targets for software right now.

The subtle thing is how to let the machine tell me it has spotted a
trend and its proposed actions without that getting in the way with
some intrusive interface element.

Once we have more gestural control the automation can be that much
richer because it has richer inputs to interpret, still without the
complexity of speech recognition.

Joel.

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Received on Sat Feb 21 14:05:12 2009

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