Life Beyond Embodiment

Slide 1: Life Beyond Embodiment Leandro Agro - IxD Director Kallideas group How an Italian company is working to reduce this distance, by creating emotional virtual agents to move bytes toward atoms on one side, while moving atoms toward bytes, Second Life's human users, on the other.

Slide 3: Some people think Second Life is hype. Others think Second Life is falling down. A lot of people like virtual assistants. Others don't care about them. ...it is not important whether a specific technology is cool enough, but whether that technology is along the way between...

Slide 4: We live in a world of cognitive artifacts humans + machines are part of the same ecosystem

Slide 5: We live in a world of cognitive artifacts …and sometimes artifacts outnumber us

Slide 6: We are accidental users of many artifacts! This means user interfaces are... VERY important, because… the evolution of an artifact implies the evolution of the one who uses it

Slide 7: Earth: the world that we are living in Do you feel the distance between bits and atoms?

Slide 8: Earth: the world that we are living in Do you feel the distance between bits and atoms?

Slide 9: How to bridge the gap?

Slide 10: Perhaps we could port some popular Internet services to the real world… Aram Bartholl’s way

Slide 11: Hardware that show your IM status

Slide 12: how about equipping robots with better sensitivity?

Slide 13: Artifact’s UI A user interface is a system Input device in which input devices and interaction techniques determine the tasks that Task users can handle. UI Old-fashioned green CRT UIs bring back to mind white lab coats. Meanwhile, today’s GUIs provide new ways to work for almost everybody in the world. …but now, what’s next? Interaction technique

Slide 14: Revolutionary UI… It is not simply a new mouse! The gaming industry experimented with a lot of different input devices. Unfortunately, once the joystick became the standard, every game looked similar to the others. From Paddles to Pads: Is Controller Design Killing Creativity in Vid - Tom Armitage

Slide 15: Blade Runner QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore TIFF (Non compresso) sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 16: We already have a “Blade Runner” UI QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 17: In the world of User Generated Contents and long tails: ”markets are conversations” A complex, multimodal approach could fit professionals; while a “conversational UI” could fit interactions between companies and people, giving users more flexibility and freedom.

Slide 18: How to bridge the gap? We feel this gap is too large to approach from a single side. So, for communications over the Internet, we are creating emotional virtual agents; K-human ™

Slide 19: Which kind of assistants?

Slide 21: Personal Assistant vs Profiled Users QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore DivX 5.1.1 sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine. 1988 200x From a personal virtual assistant to an agent that is an extension of the bank, university, Italian restaurant, etc.

Slide 22: Are we able to build an effective Virtual Assistant? Which Technologies do we need to build a working system like the one in the Apple scenarios? First of all, we need: - Internet-based - Multimodal input—the ability to perceive the user... through touch, gesture, eye movement - Text2speech - Integration with standard Knowledge Base - Speech recognition (emotions detection) - AI (Brain)

Slide 23: Back to Virtual Assistant’s Dream Claudia: K-human Julie: customer service First intelligent and emotive virtual assistant. QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine. QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 24: Whitch Brain? Anthropomorphous + Emotional Multimodal approaches are changing the rules in UI design, and increasing the bio-diversity in the IT world. Minsky rejects the idea of consciousness as a unitary "Self" in favor of "a decentralized cloud" of more than 20 distinct mental processes. In this view, emotional states like love and shame are not the opposite of rational cogitation; both, Minsky says, are ways of thinking.

Slide 25: Anthropomorphous software Understand unformatted text  Understand the human voice (by means of Voice  Recognition technology); Accept other inputs (touch screen, eye-tracking, DTMF, etc.)  QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore Sorenson Video sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.  Read text (by means of Vocal synthesis technology.); Write text and deliver documents (stored in a knowledge base  system); Perfome actions (like send e-mail, send SMS, print receipts …  Interact with users emulating humanity with personality +  emotionality Dialogue with users in a natural way with the goal of  understanding

Slide 26: Emotions could fill the gap! Such a process should lead to machines that appear intelligent. Or at least to put up with machines much better than time of windowing interfaces. QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore Sorenson Video 3 sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine. Roberto Ostinelli, Kallideas R&D Lab

Slide 27: Richer Knowledge requires AI

Slide 28: Your Customers needs AI Critical factors

Slide 29: Market Scenarios Support customers on Present and upsell new products (DTT) products Design a KB approach based on AI to Understand each customer’s needs, simplify knowledge creation and access corporate Knowledge Base to evolution. Identify issues and identify the best product or solution, automatically solve problems granting propose additional opportunities. comparable user experience on A sales agent that knows who you are different channels. Learn and improve and the best solution for you. from every problem. Allow self-training for Automate help desks employees Guide the user in a diagnostic process, increase automate ticket resolution Real-time support in problem solving: proposing the right solution, best answer queries and proactively routing the residual escalation. present new content in an easy and Save you the time spent in finding interactive way. Learning by doing has “how is it broken?” never been so easy. Increase Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Sales

Slide 30: Growing customers revenue through conversation Dependence: Pervasive entertainment Interact proactively Incentive: Create an evolving relation Customize contents on New Opportunities preferences Usefulness: for cross and up sell Innovate the way to offer ringtones, music, games, New Frontiers of services Profile dynamically on the Support interaction content Apply dynamic and adaptive schemes Guide through your website React immediately on Assist in device and services customers’ feedback configuration Support form filling, registration, purchasing

Slide 31: How it works KNOWLEDGE MODULE Represents the inside and BEHAVIOUR MODULE extern know how. Describes the personality (one each virtual assistant) that filter the emotions through the environment. INPUT MODULE Collects all inputs (voice, text, touchscreen, etc...) REPRESENTATION MODULE and analyze their semantic Analyzes the environment where the inputs are generate (i.e. dialog flow, dialog context). EMOTIONS MODULE Represents the emotions set, its OUTPUT MODULE math description and the math Shows the result of functions to map the inputs and emotional output the representation into computation and related emotions. rendering.

Slide 32: THE ARCHITECTURE This is Raul. A VA concept for ticketing…

Slide 33: Look behind the scenes

Slide 36: Pixels at your service QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore Sorenson Video 3 sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine. Tanya interviewed her creators

Slide 37: QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 38: How does this feel as a UI?

Slide 39: Case Studies

Slide 40: Silvia: Infopoint for customers

Slide 41: Silvia’s specs • Multichannel – Phone (Automatic Speech Recognition) – Web (chat) • Video Streaming • Horizontal Knowledge • Basic AI (rules engine)

Slide 42: Silvia’s Behavior • Discussion engine – Keep track of conversation – Managing the topic switch

Slide 43: Silvia’s Numbers CartaSI holds 8.5 million credit card. The CartaSI call center gets 16 million incoming calls every year CartaSI hold 8,5million of credit card. - During the first day (234 calls) she was unable to understand less than 6% of conversations. Silvia said “I don’t understand” more that 100 times. - After two weeks she miss the meaning of less that 6% of sentences, but can recover by asking the user a new yes/no question. Over 90% of errors are because she completely doesn’t know the topic! - Silvia understand about 96% of users conversations (first day 89%) - Silvia’s AI regardless of whether mobile or web users, and she handle more than 1000 calls by day.

Slide 44: Betti: intranet troubleshooter

Slide 45: Betti’s specs • Real-Time 3D Rendering • Text to Speech TTS • Specialized Knowledge • Machine-learning AI (graph navigation)

Slide 46: Betti’s Behavior • Disambiguation (she can handle hardware problems and lead users to understand exactly what is wrong). • Help desk ticket management (by email and IM) QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 47: Silvia & Betti • Are Similar – Same rendering engine (3D vs 2D) – Same text to speech (TTS) engine – Same AI engine • Are different – Stream vs Real Time – Horizontal Knowledge vs Specialized Knowledge When people in CartaSI and other clients talks about K-humans, they don’t talk about pro and cons of their new CRM software. Our clients don’t experiece our VA like a cold piece of HW/SW. They like to talk just about Silvia or Betti.

Slide 48: Tracy Trailer: call her, to discover best movies

Slide 49: Tracy Trailer’s specs - She lives in a virtual TV-studio on a mobile phone GigaSIM! - She is an Intelligent Download Agent (background download of matching and newer trailers)

Slide 50: Tracy Trailer’s Behavior • She shows trailers according typologies and movie theatres’ locations • She updates the user’s profile according to – Feedback after the movie – Questions about previous films – Feedback about home video releases

Slide 51: What happens when a synthetic world (bytes) hosts humans (atoms)

Slide 52: Tryst: The game • A virtual place where it is possible to meet other players • A virtual home to set our place and host other players

Slide 53: Tryst’s specs • For mobile phones only • Videoportal (Italian tech that mixes video calls with a media player platform) • Insite eCommerce platform

Slide 54: Tryst’s Behavior • Real person gets an avatar to play • VAs (chat box) are avatar too At the very beginning, when playing Tryst, you don’t feel a difference between human players and chat-boxes. Depending the user population, Tryst could be considered • Dating platform, dating simulation • Gaming platform (SIMs)

Slide 55: Tryst’s Shopping Engine • Digital is not “virtual” – Real digital music – Virtual object for your home • Buy for yourself or give a gift to someone else.

Slide 58: Do you remember Claudia?

Slide 59: She is a machine. Bytes (pixel) by bytes (AI).

Slide 60: QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore Video MPEG-4 sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine.

Slide 61: When Claudia is working (in a call center, for example) she is a machine that replaces (well… actually supports) a human. Meanwhile when Claudia is going around in Second Life and meeting new friends, she is a real person. A human that plays the role of a machine, giving to us an opportunity to reflect about where our world is going. We are getting closer to a huge theatre, where human and machines plays together. ….to be continued (SL: the place where machines learn)

Slide 62: Q&A Feel free to ask to me anything you like… As long you as you ask it in Italian :) We have computers that are more than 100.000 times faster (Moore’s Law) than Apple I (1976), huge and super-fast memory and broadband. The newest input devices can recognize eye gaze, gesture, and voice, not mechanically but taking into account human behaviors. Do you think that VAs are not intelligent enough? Probably, you’re right, but they just started to interact with humans and they are looking smarter every day. http://www.leeander.com

Slide 63: Thank you! QuickTimeﾪ e un decompressore TIFF (Non compresso) sono necessari per visualizzare quest'immagine. - From GUI to E(motional) UI

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