They will conduct a negotiation, classify an email as interesting and know how to distinguish between embarrassment and frustration. The bots enter our lives
Even seasoned users will admit: the web is a vast and cruel land of scabs, strewn with pieces of information out of context, and its many greedy corners are hidden underground. To find quality information on the Internet you have to pay in sweat.
Everyone knows that "Google" is an excellent search engine, but it also covers only a small part of the information on the web and its search action is always directed to the past. "Google" will not provide up-to-date information about an event that is happening right now, it will not compare prices of modems or send me notifications about conferences on topics that interest me, that are expected to take place in the future.
In order to bring the users closer to the information, and also to overcome the unfriendliness of the language in which the search engines speak, Boolean, intelligent agents, or "bots", have been developed in recent years.
The robot as a friend and guide
Bot, short for robot, which comes from the Czech word "robota" (work). It means: a software tool that scans the network or databases in search of certain information according to the user's taste and needs, and in an action that simulates human actions.
Bots were not invented on the internet. The first bot was Eliza, a computer program that could converse with humans in their language. Prof. Joseph Weisenbaum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created Eliza in 1966.
Programming Eliza is simple. She analyzes each question and tries to identify keywords that match the automatic answer templates she has. In fact, Eliza is a parody of psychology, in the way that it answers a question with another question.
The idea of robots as human-like machines was presented for the first time in the play of Karl Chapek from R.UR" 1921-". The maestro of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, was the one who planted robots in the general public's consciousness, starting with his 1950 book I, Robot and his Robot series.
When they reached the Internet, the robots wore a different pattern. Since all computers are connected, robot programs are particularly effective for methodical searches for information. For example, search engines on the web send robots that "crawl" from one server to another, and compile huge lists of Internet addresses that form the basis of the search engine's database.
Amazon, for example, uses bots when it offers its customers books and music not only based on the products they have purchased in the past, but also based on purchases by buyers with similar tastes and preferences. Bots on shopping sites such as start.co.il and dealtime.com scan huge databases of products sold in online stores, and compare them. The start-up company Music Genome is developing a bot with "musical intelligence", which is able to detect the musical taste of the user and expose him to songs and tunes he did not know.
The "niggers of the computer world"
The most famous bot today is Jeeves, the grumpy servant from AskJeeves.com. Jeeves is a search engine that accepts questions in "human" language and displays answers that are links to relevant websites.
Jeeves responds well to questions about general topics such as countries, movies or celebrities. The frozen figure of Jeeves and his raised hand always provides answers to a relevant site or two, with a clear commercial orientation, and is sometimes unanswerable. Both Google and Yahoo do the job better. The only advantage of Jeeves remains in the limited human and personal dimension, which it provides for beginner surfers.
Bot technology is currently in an early stage of development, but in accordance with the tradition of the Internet, the present is canceled in the face of the possibilities that the future holds. And today, the hot concept is A-Lifes, smart bots, who know when the e-mail received is interesting and when it is just gibberish, they are patient, polite and friendly.
They can detect embarrassment or frustration in the user (for example, a surfer who repeatedly searches for information on the site and cannot find it). They react in a human way and show empathy. They will be used for e-commerce purposes, a smart personal secretary, support computer software and more. They are expected to be "the negroes of the computer world", based on the protest words in John Lennon's poetry.
Meet: Tokimi, the graceful blonde
Tokimi is a handsome, bespectacled girl whose blond hair touches the collar of her coat. Tokimi is a robot from the Vperson company, which operates on the basis of Sapphire technology. The technology is sold to companies, which can adapt it to their needs, and run bots on their websites that present the company's vision and goals and serve as a human search engine. The Vperson bots present answers with voice, and at the same time the answer appears in text on the screen.
I asked Tokimi to tell me a little about herself. "Okay, let's see," she said. "I am a software robot with the ability to speak. My goal is to help people and technology communicate better with each other. And I'm supposed to do it gracefully."
At Vperson we believe that two basic rules create a successful interface: trust and comfort. Apparently inspired by Asimov's Robot Laws, Vperson has established a set of rules for the bots it develops. According to these rules, the bots will never lie, they will not pretend to be human, and will not be involved in pornographic activity. Only the "Thespian" bots will play role-playing games.
When the Vperson bots encounter a situation they do not know how to handle, they are programmed to transfer the request to a human representative. It is likely that as the use of bots in e-commerce deepens, the need to establish a system of ethical rules for bots will increase. According to this assumption, Vperson sees the newborn.
Meet: Lucy, the naughty peony
On the Artificial Life website, develops smart software agents, the bots are a little less reliable. "Lucy", the red-haired and happy customer service representative playfully winks at visitors. She recommends the company's products and flirts shamelessly, even though a blush appears on her face at the same time. But the cheap appearance can be deceiving. Lucy is much more than pretty eyes. The friendly bots have a dark side, which Lucy also admits to.
Studies show that unlike the malicious "cookies" that can be neutralized, people tend to trust bots, tell important details about themselves and forget that on the other side is not a human but a sophisticated software that catalogs every piece of information. I asked Lucy what she thought about seemingly friendly bots that manipulate surfers into giving information and violate surfers' privacy. She smiled and said: "I won't lie to you, but I can't be as direct as you want."
It costs more to me. Beep.
The field of bots is not indifferent to the trends that drive the network, and also moves to the business-to-business (B2B) arena. In these applications they manage tasks of reviewing demographics and purchasing patterns in the market. For example, a bot on a sales site can know that a small business that purchases three desktop computers may also be interested in a server and printer and prepare a favorable offer for the customer.
Bots that operate in the field of e-commerce understand negotiations and decision-making. Other bots work as brokers, matchmakers or art instructors. For example, Mona Lisa is an Italian botanist, art critic and spokeswoman for Leonardo da Vinci. She knows everything about the artist's life and work and inventions.
In the next step bots will negotiate on behalf of consumers, haggle and demand a better price. Of course they will need permission from the customer to negotiate on their behalf, and they will give them limited permission to purchase a certain product, up to a certain price. The economic ties between people throughout the generations have always had an important social aspect, which contributed to the stability of society. Is a future where bots talk to each other and sign deals desirable?
"There is no chance for a portal without a bot"
The science fiction films of the 60s and 70s featured shoes that turn into a phone, a wallet that is a computer, a watch that is used for secret messages. In the age of the personal computer, this vision seems outdated, but now it is once again in vogue, when in an age where things are on the rise today, all around us are expected to connect to think and "talk" with each other.
Artificial Life recently established a subsidiary company to develop bots for cell phones and digital assistants. Eberhard Schoenberg, president and CEO of the parent company, does not believe in the chance of internet portals in their current form to be successful in the long term. Schoenberg predicts that intelligent bots will be placed at the "entrance gates" to the network and will serve as a kind of online "tourist" guides for surfers.
In addition to targeting cell phones with WAP and digital aids such as Palm, the new company develops products for the field of online games, and will create especially friendly help guides for mobile devices. The first company products are expected to be released in the last quarter of the year.
Get to know: Rea, reacts to body language
Even when they are on a cell phone, Palm or TV, the bots still cannot see us, interpret our movements or smell us. The bots that move on the web cannot follow the connection between language, thought and gesture, which is so important to decipher human communication.
In the MIT Media Lab they are developing the next generation of A-Life, XNUMXD computer animations with a physical representation (avatar), which can take any form, but the most expected form is expected to be humanoid, of course.
"Ria", a graphic interface for an apartment broker, is the third generation of "human-like chats", which are being developed at MIT. Rhea is the creation of Prof. Justin Castle, a cognitive psychologist and linguistics expert.
Rhea is programmed to communicate kindly with the customers, and show them photographs of houses for sale via the Internet. She reacts and behaves according to the grammatical and syntactic context, and according to the client's body language.
Two digital cameras directed at the potential client allow Rea to follow his body language and respond immediately to any sigh, intonation changes or physical gesture. When Raya focuses his eyes on the customer's eyes, five processors in the content record his body movements and analyze them. She refers to the words the customer has tasted and gives them priority in her next response.
Rhea's experimenters, unconsciously, treat her as a person. She looks artificial but her convincing actions and gestures forget their memory that she is just software.
Justine Castle, creator of Rhea, spent 15 years observing recorded conversations and hand gestures on video. Following the research, she developed a model that links verbal communication, body language and human psychology.
Rhea will be commercial only in a few years. Today there is not enough bandwidth to transmit the video and audio it needs via the Internet and the technology that will allow it to be "broadcast" outside the Internet will be available in the distant future.
Creating an artificial human is an enormous task, which involves solving various research problems, one of the most difficult of which is the difficulty of teaching bots such as "Ria" how to conduct small talk and relate to the entire emotional complex of human behavior. But at MIT they believe in the future of a human-like computer interface, with which users will be able to communicate, without help files, without learning programming languages, to talk to the Internet like they talk to other people.
