The New York Times has a feature today on the new push in AI; it seems that they are starting to get somewhere. Smart household control, smarter cars and nav systems, and expert systems that finally do more than ELIZA. But some of the ideas are just sappy.
At Stanford University, for instance, computer scientists are developing a robot that can use a hammer and a screwdriver to assemble an Ikea bookcase...AI, to be useful, needs to reduce the level of frustration that people have with the increasingly complicated and technical world. An Ikea-bookcase building machine isn't that (more complicated and intimidating than the actual bookcase). Nor is a nav system that figures out that you are driving to work and tells you how to get there, unasked. So, here are a few problems that really do need solving that only AI has a hope of providing:At Microsoft, researchers are working on the idea of “predestination.” They envision a software program that guesses where you are traveling based on previous trips, and then offers information that might be useful based on where the software thinks you are going.