Alaska Airlines Deploys Virtual Travel Agent - Jenn

Here is a story that I have a special interest in, having developed a number of web and Instant Messenger agents over the last 7 or 8 years myself. Alaska Airlines, and as it turns out the US Army, have recently deployed virtual agents to their sites. While it does not appear as though the technology has taken great leaps forward, it is nice to see commercial deployments and apparently satisfied customers embracing the technology. In this case, developer Next IT spokesman Jeff Brown says “We built out the personality, aware that people would want to test the bounds,” and further “So if they ask questions such as ‘Are you married?’ or ‘Where did you go to school?’ she’s able to answer intelligently, and all of a sudden people’s trust in the overall knowledge goes up significantly. We’re in the business of making her very smart. Basically, besides knowledge, the virtual agent’s image has a past, a current and a future.” The NY Times article discussing Alaska Airlines deployment does not say whether or not Next IT uses proprietary software, the experience reminds me of Artificial Solutions (formerly Kiwi Logic) Interactive Chat Assistant technology. There are also offerings by Microsoft on the horizon after their acquisition of the buddyscript platform, and of course the open source Alice from the A.L.I.C.E. Artificial Intelligence Foundation and Dr. Richard Wallace.

Human like robot - CB2

By now you may have already seen the news articles about CB2 the Japanese robot that was developed to mimic a child's movements between ages 1 and 3. The machine has 56 actuators that replace muscles and allow it to move in an immature yet human like fashion. While I have never worked in robotics, I've studied artificial intelligence and have developed Internet based chat robots which are often represented by avatars. One thing that I have noticed in my work, is that the more human looking the avatar the creepier it looks, and it's usually because of the eyes! Animated, cartoon like characters always seem to be more accepted than the photo-realistic ones. While CB2 was developed for the purpose of studying the movements of a child, I'm not sure why the researchers felt the need to give it such human like appearance. I love robotics and am considering a Roomba, though I think I'll wait until the new year when iRobot is said to be launching 3 new devices, I just hope they don't make the things look too human like! It's just unnatural looking no matter how hard they try, besides I want to know who is man and who is machine...