From: Cliff Stabbert (cps46@earthlink.net)
Date: Fri Nov 08 2002 - 21:52:54 MST
I wrote:
CS> I think the Novamente approach -- more narrowly focused commercial
CS> efforts -- are a very good approach to funding currently. I do have
CS> a long-simmering but vague-in-details idea for some AI tech that
CS> Novamente at its current stage may or may not be suited to, which
CS> if implemented as a software package could be quite popular.
Ben Goertzel:
BG> Well, feel free to voice the details, either on the list or via private
BG> e-mail, ben@goertzel.org ;)
Peter Voss:
> I'm interested in any and all potential early applications for AGI - both to
> evaluate the performance of our a2i2 system, and for possible
> implementation.
I don't have much time at the moment to sketch this in greater detail,
and my own limited notes on this are at the time unavailable. So what
follows is *very* vague, brief and blue-sky...but it may spark some
ideas.
The main thrust is the use of AI in GUIs. There are two main aspects
to that -- modeling the computer and modeling the user -- as well as
some other features. As a product, I envision something that sits "on
top" of the OS, or encapsulates it, and is always the "outermost"
control the user can speak to -- the ultimate arbiter, the
presidential hotline, and where the user communicates *about* what the
computer does. (Another, somewhat less ambitious, implementation
would be specific to and sit on top of a software package such as
Microsoft Office).
-------------
I'm sure all of us have run into problems like the following: I was
installing a piece of software under Windows. I have my PC set up
with all apps on E:, so I chose E: as the install drive. It wouldn't
let me proceed because, it said, the E: drive was full. I checked
under Explorer -- and as I thought, I had plenty of space.
So what was going on? I'm not certain -- it may have been that the
installation program was looking at total minus used space and going
by the 2GB value for total space (this was under Win95); it may have
been using variables that were too small and getting overflow...it may
have been any number of glitches.
But it got me thinking -- we have two different programs (the
installer and Explorer) telling me two different things. We have an
"out of space" dialog box that some programmer went to the trouble of
building, and the out-of-space check they coded for it...
When you work on a modern GUI, it's really in a sense like you're
having a dialogue. You tell it to do things, and it comes back with
"dialog boxes" ("disk too full", etc.).
The problem is that you are having a dialogue with a schizophrenic
amnesiac, and what is more, one who communicates in a very inflexible,
rigid, repetitive way.
As a user, I want a single, coherent, consistent conversation that
builds -- from question to question and day to day. A conversation
that makes sense.
-------------
In essence what I want as a user is that the computer "understands"
what it is telling me. Well, what does that mean? That it must have
some internal representation of itself, that symbols such as "hard
drive" and "free space" must be not just strings of characters, but
have some semantic *value* -- some *referent*.
I.e., the software should have an internal model of the computer in
which terms such as the above are meaningfully linked to actual values
from that model.
Such a model, with some associated pseudo-natural-language processing,
may be the "simpler" aspect of the software -- perhaps amenable to
established technologies (DBs, natural query languages, expert
systems, etc.).
-------------
When I tell the computer to save my file and the disk *is* full, it
should come up with a more meaningful set of choices - it should have
some basic understanding of why I want to save a file and e.g. offer
me - do you want to clear some space or save to D: instead?
Now, I have seen the above -- a dialog box asking me whether I want to
clear space -- but it, again, was something some programmer separately
designed and built code for.
As a user, I want the computer to "know" that I want to save files,
that if space is unavailable in one place I may want to save it
elsewhere, or free space up.
More fundamentally, I want to be able to teach it such things.
-------------
This implies the software needs to have an internal evolvable model of
me, the user, as well.
In the context of Microsoft Office, it would have some ideas of "what
I do" (create new documents and edit existing ones, type and format
stuff, print them, save them, file them, search them). It should
learn and suggest things on its own (create "wizards" on the fly --
I type "Dear George" and it pops up with "another letter to George,
'ey? Usual headings? File under 'Presidential correspondence'?")
The model should evolve both under internal (user-confirmed) guesses
and under user direction. The software should always have available
-- no matter what the user is doing -- a way for the user to interrupt
and tell it to "go meta". By this I mean a way for the user to tell
the software "Now watch what I'm doing...whenever I do X, I want you
to do Y and Z." or "See that dialog that popped up? Always click "No"
on that one."
Here's where the model gets more complex, because it needs to deal
with analogies. "See how I'm taking each of the sentences from this
paragraph and making them bullet points? Do it for the rest of the
paragraph." is relatively simple. "Do the same thing to this line
chart." is more complex (what is "the same thing"? Does each series
(line) get split into its own chart? Each year?). This is also the
point in the model where an ongoing dialogue becomes most important --
being able to correct the assumptions and guesses the software makes,
such corrections getting folded back into the model.
-------------
The language used to describe the internal structures of the computer
and its software, actions associated with them, etc. should allow for
sharing between users. In other words, once one user has "told" the
system about what PhotoShop does (via interactive querying by the
software, details too long to go into), others wouldn't need to.
-------------
So, vague and scatter-shot. There's a lot left out of the above and
when I can dig up all my notes and have the time, I might put together a
more coherent and detailed presentation of this; the AGI list is
probably a more suitable venue.
The reason I see this as a viable application for (early) AGI is
because on the one hand it requires limited, quantifiable, shareable
knowledge (domain expertise about software combined with the ability
to intercept both user events and OS API calls) and on the other,
provides an "evolution-driving" environment: the user's requirements.
There is IMO a widespread need for such tech in user interfaces, thus
plenty of people who would want to use it. And possibly, if this or
some variant on it was structured in the right way (perhaps dealing
with the browsing experience, say), a huge number of users could be
leveraged to drastically accelerate the evolution of the software.
-- Cliff
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