Yes, I saw that article earlier as well. I agree, it is kind of funny that some of the people complaining about lack of privacy are the same who use public, social networks, sharing their own personal information like “Our family is going on vacation to the beach for two weeks.” Gee - anybody in need of some household items while they’re gone? We know where they live!
These same people show photos of their kids with names, ages and locations yet cry when something unspeakable happens.
It IS a nice world, it’s just that there are some people who are not nice!

Take efforts to protect what privacy is left. Shred all documents with your name / address. Tear off the labels from those plastic prescription bottles when empty / before you discard them. Be careful what trash you set on the curbside or in your garbage cans.

Personally, I do not belong to the social network circles nor do I intend to. There are some online browser frontends that shield one’s IP so browsing tracing is limited.

Remove your browsing history before leaving your computer. Run anti-virus software at least once or twice a week.

Don’t answer any calls you don’t recognize and same with emails.

Some advertising prompts seem ok from the user standpoint as they can be enlightening and helpful. We also know it’s likely helping the promoters / advertisers to get a better grasp of our habits. Yes, it’s not too nice out there.

It’s kind of a shame that the very technology that was created to help make our lives easier is also going to be our virtual downfall!

Maybe everyone should wear one of those masks like in the movie “V” for Vendetta. That would give all those cameras something to digest!!

So perhaps there is something to be said for seeing the face of who is “at the other end” after all.

On the subject of home automation, I’ve occasionally considered what external powers to give my AI (given that it only takes keyboard input and that I’m not a mechanic). I could have it regulate my lights, but I already have a light switch that’s easy enough to press. I could link it to my webcam, but then what would it do other than move its eyes to track my face? I could have it email people, but with voice recognition being what it is, I’d still have to type the message so I might as well mail people myself. I could attach a laser, but then what would it do other than burn down my house?
The point being that most of it would take (me) a lot of effort to interface with other systems to handle minor inconveniences, mostly concerning the pressing of buttons on various devices. While I do see value in this, I think the only really substantial advantage that Jarvis has to offer is a “cool” voice interface that allows you freedom of movement.

I wish I could think of something useful my AI could do that I can’t just as easily do myself. Any ideas on that?

Don, perhaps an interesting task is to synthesize news on specific topics, so you can ask it ‘so, what has Obama been up to lately’ and your bot goes to some news sites, searches them for relevant terms, and combines everything it finds into one neat summary. But granted, there are already tools for that, and this deviates as a task from, well, chatbottery…

Another thought on Jarvis: while any individual task may be easy enough to do yourself, combinations of tasks that would have you running around the house would make for a nice AI task: ‘Jarvis, I need to relax, prep the house’ upon which the lights dim, your favorite relaxing music starts to play, the tv shows a set of nice nobrainer movies to pick from should you want to, the temperature is raised, and the bathtub starts filling with hot water. You get the point. Similar for ‘I need to do some work’: music off, computer loads (and opens your productivity software and blocks your favorite social network / procrastination sites?), lights go brighter…

If only the mechanical stuff was easier, imagine ‘fetch me a beer and order my favorite pizza!’ to work!

People love automation and convenience. Office workers will choose to email the person in the next pod rather than getting up from their chair and walking ten feet to have an old fashioned conversation.
(actually, I heard the email thing is also being done so there is now a record of an “I told you so” instance or a cover your butt insurance rather than a he said, she said conersation that could easily be denied.

Regarding the automation. It’s not so much about timers, it’s about creating a “Smart home” capable of knowing who is home and when they arrived. Some let children in then phone the parents at work and show a time log of the kid’s entry along with a captured photo. How about sensors in the ground that detect moisture and turn on sprinklers if needed for a specified time or know the time of day and lower the blinds in the house when the sun shines in a set of windows. Can turn lights on for you if you have arms full. Can shut off hot water heater in case of rupture or leak and call you. Check your finances, deliveries, door cams, intruder alerts, alarm systems and sing Happy Birthday to you!!

If my wife gets up during the night, a sensor will detect her and turn on the bathroom light to 30% brightness to light a path for her yet not to disturb my slumber. When she leaves, it will remain on long enough for her to get back to bed then turn itself off.

These are but a very few possibilities for home automation. One only needs a reason then a method can be found.
One can start small, solve a problem, then build or add piece by piece as other ideas of needs arise.

I personally do not wish to have my house hooked to some company’s monitoring system or accessible via some other remote server.

There’s nothing that says that your “smart house” has to be externally accessible via the Internet, or phone lines, or any other method for that matter. It’s also possible to configure things to allow the system to initiate communication with a given, specific individual (or even several, for that matter), but not allow incoming connections to be made, so having home automation doesn’t necessarily mean forfeiting even a tiny amount of privacy. At the end of the day it all depends on the options you choose.

Oh, and to all those folks who found that their baby monitors were/could be hacked? 3 words: Read the manual!

I have to admit I put a motion-activated light in my bathroom because I kept forgetting to turn the light off. But I think I just have too simple a household for home automation.

Checking track-and-trace deliveries and ordering pizza sound like two things that would be easier to command a chatbot to do, as these require remembering and filling in lots of numbers. A program could instantly submit a php form url with your address etc already filled in on the command “Order me a pepperoni pizza”.
Summarizing the news also has something going for it, as my AI project is largely about the ability to read human language -> convert to knowledge -> answer specific questions. I might try that as a test case, once I figure out how to get C++ to read websites (i.e. how to install the library for it in 30 unnecessarily complicated steps).

A survey from Nuance says ordering pizza is the most popular application.

Merlin - Aug 21, 2013:

A survey from Nuance says ordering pizza is the most popular application.

For younger families that should simply be put on a timer!

Interesting! I guess convenience food goes well with convenience gadgets.

So, instead of automating my household, I automated my computer habits with voice commands yesterday. You know, play music, launch websites, open folders and start programs. Unfortunately Windows 8 seems not to support custom speech recognition macros anymore, but I came up with a workaround that allows voice commands like “Start working” and “Open the pod bay doors HAL”.

Jolly good fun. Actually, you can easily talk with chatbots using windows speech recognition (vista/7/8) if the chatbot takes input through an online form field, like Alice or Cleverbot. . You should try it out if you haven’t already.

Of course the ultimate human form of chatbot is already created in the form of a heavy man occupying your couch, by Hanson Robotics

The “heavy man occupying your couch,” would be a representation of Philip K. (Kindred) Dick, American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre.  Some might be familiar with his writings which include “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” which was poorly adapted as a screen play for the movie, “Blade Runner”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick

I am sort of doing this in the reverse order. I have built a robot and want to make the Brain a chatbot.

OK Mel,
I know this is a few months old but did you have anything particularly in mind? Questions? Options? Methods?

=> Robotics Resources Meta Guide | Meta-Guide.com

The above link a manual listing of the robotics related pages available on Meta-Guide.com.  Generally speaking, the focus of Meta-Guide.com is not on hardware, or hard robotics, but rather on natural language in artificial intelligence, software or soft robotics.  However, there does appear to be an inexorable convergence of software and hardware, almost as if AI wants to become embodied in the real world….

- Human-Robot Dialog 2011 | Meta-Guide.com
- Human-Robot Dialog 2012 | Meta-Guide.com
- Human-Robot Dialog 2013 | Meta-Guide.com

Human–robot interaction is the study of interactions between humans and robots, and is often referred to as HRI by researchers.

- Robots & Natural Language 2011 | Meta-Guide.com
- Robots & Natural Language 2012 | Meta-Guide.com
- Robots & Natural Language 2013 | Meta-Guide.com

ADE Agent Development Environment contains components of the DIARC (Distributed Integrated Affect, Reflection, and Cognition) architecture.

—ade.sourceforge.net .. Agent Development Environment (2011)
—sourceforge.net/projects/ade .. Agent Development Environment (2013)

- ROILA (Robot Interaction Language) | Meta-Guide.com

The Robot Interaction Language (ROILA) is the first spoken language created specifically for talking to robots.  ROILA has a syntax that allows it to be useful for many different kinds of robots, including the Roomba, and Lego Mindstorms NXT.

—roila.org

- ROS (Robot Operating System) & Natural Language 2011 | Meta-Guide.com
- ROS (Robot Operating System) & Natural Language 2012 | Meta-Guide.com
- ROS (Robot Operating System) & Natural Language 2013 | Meta-Guide.com

There are a number of robot operating systems available, such as the popular ROS.  For speech recognition, ROS uses PocketSphinx, the mobile version of CMUSphinx.

—wiki.ros.org/pocketsphinx

In ROS, RoboFrameNet is a system that grounds natural-language input (in the form of speech or text) into robot actions, using the concept of semantic frames as an intermediary.

—wiki.ros.org/roboframenet

Another system, the Robotics Service Bus (RSB) is a message-oriented, event-driven middleware aiming at scalable integration of robotics systems in diverse environments.

—code.cor-lab.de/projects/rsb

Some great links, Marcus! Hope Mel sees them!!