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Dr. Roman V. Yampolskiy from University of Louisville says that we should be aware of dangerously self-aware chatbots and he suggests to keep dangerous AI entities in virtual prison for avoiding social-engineering attacks. According to him, we should improve cybersecurity, because one day disobeying virtual agents could threaten humanity’s existence.

Dr. Roman V. Yampolski from University of Louisville claims that artificial conversational entities, shopping bots, and intelligent software applications became closer in their abilities and intelligence to human beings. Therefore arised the need to recognize and verify the identity of such entities just like it is necessary to authenticate the identity of people.

New, future oriented field of artimetrics, i.e. artificial biometrics, focuses on recognition, verification, and authentication of virtual agents, robots and other nonbiological entities. As a sub-field of cybersecurity, artimetrics is being developed in Cyber-Security Lab, which prides itself on being the world’s first to conduct this kind of research.

This video shows two animated speaking chatbots talking to other. I don’t know the creator nor something about the technology used for AI components, speech technology or avatar animation. I assume that the dialogue is a text to text interaction and that the speech is synthesized (i.e. the speech itself of the other chatterbot is not interpreted).

ASR (Automated Speech Recognition) is definitely the next step. I’m waiting for it!

The robot presented on the video can chat with other humanoid robots via the Internet. Moreover, when faced with a new situation, the robot can search the World Wide Web and gather appropriate information in order to fill an identified knowledge gap. Afterwards, it incorporates new knowledge under its own power, and is ready to execute diverse new tasks.

Present chatbots have rather limited reasoning, inflexible behavior and they lack learning abilities. They perform entrusted tasks in strict accordance with programmed procedures. What if chatbot developers equipped new chatbots with an advanced online-learning mechanism applied recently in intelligent humanoid robots?

We are already in 2012 and for those involved in the industry of chatbots and artificial intelligence it will be an exciting year for sure! Concretely, 2012 has been designated “Alan Turing Year”, commemorating the mathematician, computer pioneer, and code-breaker on the centennial of Turing’s birth.

A survey to find out what functionality users want to see when they interact with a virtual agent - or chatbot - has been launched by chatbot specialists Daden Limited (Daden). Increasing in popularity, chatbots (a computer programme which maintains a conversation with a person using natural language) are seen as a cost-effective support to customer service desks and live chat. Available 24/7, chatbots respond to queries and frequently asked questions enhancing customer experiences and directing visitors to relevant web pages. To consider future development of the industry as a whole, Daden have devised a short online survey to understand what functionality people would like to see in chatbots.

On November 1, 2011 I gave a talk to Google on natural language processing, including chatbot technology and issues in understanding simple English sentences for a story-game demo which tries to act out the sentences. Download the PDF or read full text below.

Fresh Perspectives

I am an AI research engineer. I want to create things that people use, but that stretch the boundaries of the possible. Whatever I work on, I research it and then try to come at it with a fresh perspective. A fresh perspective is something Google and I have in common, though we approach things from opposite directions. Typically my fresh perspectives involve understanding a domain and then writing a new application-specific scripting language to encapsulate insights I have gleaned. Google’s perspectives come from access to massive amounts of data and hardware.

I research everything. I even researched how to give this talk. I thought about making a lot of clever PowerPoint slides. Then I read up on using and abusing PowerPoint. I abandoned that plan.

Experience a foreign or distant world without actually being there: Japanese researchers leaded by professor Susumu Tachi at Tachi Laboratory have developed Telesar V Robot Avatar which delivers a remote experience straight to its operator by transmitting sight, sound and touch data. You can actually feel the shape and surface unevenness, and also the temperature of objects.

The goal of psychology is to predict and control behavior. It is the same goal we have as knowledge engineers. This may sound somewhat Orwellian, but it is not about sinister machinations. In Artificial Solutions, we want to do everything possible to help users of our Teneo virtual assistants (VAs) quickly and conveniently find the way to the information they need. Since a VA is typically designed to answer a specific set of queries, we have a clear idea of which content should be covered. For example, it’s reasonable to expect that a VA on a bank’s website will be asked questions about banking, hence it will need to be an expert on transactions such as opening accounts and transferring money, but it is not reasonable to expect it to advise you which sofa to buy with the check you write. Anna knows every item that IKEA sells, but will be puzzled if you try to borrow money from her.

Most conventional hard robots are composed of metallic structures. However, the development of soft robots can find new applications in robotics and virtual humans in augmented reality environment. An elastomeric gripper of an embodied agent equipped with an embedded pneumatic network could touch, recognize and gently pick up an egg!