— original item from Steve Knode
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The Personal Assistant for Scheduling system, a disembodied head floating on a computer screen outside Horvitz’s office in Redmond, Wash., is one of the most advanced artificial intelligence programs in the world. It can understand speech, detect faces and interpret body motion. It analyzes years of Horvitz’s daily routines to find patterns that suggest the appropriate responses to most workplace scenarios.
The 21st century secretary underscores the breakthrough underway in artificial intelligence and what becomes possible as computers learn to, for lack of a better term, perceive. Through what are broadly called natural user interfaces, machines can increasingly make sense of activity in the real world, from touch, motion, images and sounds, as opposed to information entered through keystrokes. Computers are learning our language, instead of forcing us to learn theirs.