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Tag: conversational computing

  • Siri Co-founder: I Would Have Liked to See Siri Evolve to Doing More Things

    Siri Co-founder: I Would Have Liked to See Siri Evolve to Doing More Things

    The Co-Founder & former CEO of Siri, Dag Kittlaus, says that he “would have liked to see Siri evolve to doing more things, greater capabilities to become a bigger part of your life.” Siri was acquired by Apple in 2010.

    In 2012 Kittlaus co-founded another AI company, Viv, an artificial intelligence platform that enables developers to create an intelligent, conversational interface to anything. Viv was acquired by Samsung in 2016.

    Dag Kittlaus, Co-Founder of Siri and Viv, recently discussed Siri and Viv on Bloomberg:

    Has Siri lived up to your expectations?

    On the positive side, it’s gotten a lot faster, the speech recognition got a lot better. I would have liked to see Siri evolve to doing more things, greater capabilities to become a bigger part of your life merely because it’s doing so many more things for you.

    That was really the idea for the next company that we started, was how do we make it go from, not a novelty, but from a basic utility in your life to something much bigger, a paradigm in itself that you are really relying on in your everyday world.

    Why Hasn’t Apple Gotten There and is it Apples Fault?

    To some extent, but I just think they had a different focus from where we started it originally. I would have liked to see Apple open up to a third party ecosystem much earlier. That’s something that we are doing now. We think that is the big missing piece.

    The Apple app store is actually a perfect metaphor for this. The iPhone actually launched in 2007 with just a few Apple apps on it, weather and some very basic things. When the app store opened and unleashed the creativity of the developers around the world that changed the world.

    About Viv from the Original Announcement:

    For consumers, Viv is going to be the intelligent interface to everything you’re going to be talking to all different kinds of things it’s going to be doing all sorts of things for you. For developers, Viv is going to be the next great marketplace. You’ve got app stores today but the thing that comes after app stores is this new type of marketplace. This is a marketplace that works for all the different kinds of devices that the Internet of Things will in use cases that they’ll generate and a marketplace that will become the next big area.

     

  • The Conversational Computing Revolution is Upon Us

    “We’ve long dreamed of talking computers,” noted Barry Briggs, consultant and former CTO for Microsoft, where he helped lead the company’s transition to the cloud and is generally known as a pioneer in the computing industry. What Briggs is referring to is advent of talking devices and conversational interfaces which are just now beginning to reshape how we use computers, and more importantly how we interact with data.

    Formerly, according to Briggs, talking computers (such as ELIZA) were more or less a trick. “After a time, because of the program’s simplicity, the novelty wears off,” he said.

    However, things are advancing so fast that conversational Star Trek style computer and device interaction is foreshadowing a transformative societal shift. Briggs said in January 2014, “The limitations are really gone. We have built software for decades now thinking about what are the limitations that the hardware or the amount of storage for the network place upon us. Those limitations don’t exist anymore.”

    Fast forward to today Briggs writes:

    “Because of the nearly limitless computing and storage capacity in the cloud, and because of great advances in AI, machine learning, speech recognition, and data storage and analytics, Weizenbaum’s primitive ELIZA program has evolved into something far more magical and useful,” says Briggs. “Perhaps, even, we’re at the advent of the next big shift in computing, fueled by artificial intelligence and built around a behavior that is most natural to humans: conversations.”

    Briggs sees bots at the advent of this conversational shift. “Want a pizza? Just ask Domino’s chatbot. Or PizzaHut’s chatbot. Need to get somewhere? Ask Uber.”  

    He wonders, “Can bots become the new UI?”

    “For business, the transformation of conversational computing is just beginning. As bots are connected to corporate databases, for example, they’ll simplify tasks from onsite repairs to scheduling meetings into simple conversational actions like, “What parts do I need to fix this?” or “What time is Customer X available next Monday?”

    Eventually, by taking advantage of the massive data storage and mining capabilities available in the cloud, bots will get to know you, providing intelligent suggestions like, “While you’re on site with the customer, I’d suggest examining the engine gearbox, I’m seeing some early failures in other installs,” and learning from previous experiences: “Did the fix I suggested last time help?”

    We’ve come a long way from Weizenbaum’s ELIZA. What started as a bit of sleight-of-hand programming has turned into an entirely new, intuitive and efficient way of interacting with computers. Conversational bots built on cloud-based artificial intelligence enable new frontiers in customer intimacy, simplify access to information, and help businesses and consumers make more informed decisions – quicker.”

    Read the full article at the Microsoft Transform Blog…