The document discusses various desirable intelligence augmenting technologies including: 1) An "exocortex" that extends human intelligence through seamless integration with external technological devices and systems. 2) An ideal software assistant that takes notes, does research, manages schedules and budgets, remembers everything, finds relevant information, and acts as a "muse". 3) An "internet of things" where not just physical objects but also conceptual things are connected without duplication of data about the same things across different systems.

1. Exocortical Dreams
Brainstorming desirable intelligence
augmenting technologies

2. Exocortex is part of you
• Exocortex is extension of your neocortex via external
technological devices and systems
– Especially ones more deeply and seamlessly interfaced
• But this is a goal of many computational/communication devices
• Natural drivers in this direction
• All computational and communication devices that extend
your effective intelligence are part of it
• Some of your exocortex is shared with other people
– Beginning of group mind
• The devices that are part of your mind and effective
intelligence are as important and should be as secured /
safeguarded / not be trespassed on as your physical brain.

3. What kind of tools do you dream of?
• Voice interfaces
• Software assistant
– Takes notes (voice?), does research, notes what I need and fetches it,
notifies me of relevant things
– Is my appointment secretary
– Is my budget manager..
– Remembers everything
– Finds anything relevant and useful to what I am doing
– muse
• Internet of Things
– Not just physical things hooked to internet with all their information
– Internet of conceptual things as well
• No dead unconnected data

4. Human Computer Interface
• What kinds of interfaces are best for humans?
• Take advantage of our strengths, augment our weaknesses
– Strengths
• Chunking
• Pattern recognition (especially visual)
• Induction and abduction
• Complex (mostly social) inter-relationships
– Weakness
• Memory
• Computation
• Analysis with too many non-chunkable free variables
• Large scale sifting of information
• Finding patterns in data sets to large for us

5. Dumb data, duplication
• Information about an object X of type Y should always be
associated with that instance
• Instances should persist and have identity for long lived “things”
• Today the connection, the “what is this about” is largely not
automated but in users heads or particular software
• Can’t have internet of things like this or much reasoning and pulling
together relevant information.
• Many copies of somewhat differing data about same things in many
formats
• Relationships between things seldom 1st class entities in programs
and systems
• Persistent, distributed cloud of software objects / agents / actors

6. Software Agents
• More or less autonomous software programs
– Long running
– Task focused (specialized or task assignable)
– May cooperate with other agents in agent ecology
• Some agents are mobile
– Many are designed as loadable modules on any suitable
platform
– May propagate copies much like a worm or virus
• Search agents are a simple example
• Shopping and auction agents
• Some types of bots would qualify

7. Software Agents
• One being’s worm is another being’s research
tool
– Traveling software entities phone home
• The invisible hand in the world of software bots
– Bidding on tasks
– Contracts
– Subcontract
• Describing what is needed
• Representing knowledge

8. Mobile Computing
• There’s an app for that
– Not yet for many things and not that smart but..
• Location based computing is huge
– context awareness
– Augmented reality
– Proximity notices (people, events, tasks..)
• Sensor processing
• Explosion of cheap ubiquitous partial solutions
– Input an issue
• Voice input much needed
– Pulling out a device and navigating menus to an app and
navigating its menus is too slow
• Causes much less use than would be beneficial
– Flash mobs
• People/machines (cyborgs) flocking on information feeds

9. Digital Research Assistant
• System that scans a corpus of articles and other
sources
• Does data mining and other techniques to extract
concepts
• May be tuned to look for particular keywords
– System to find bi-metals tried and suggest new ones is
famous example, several patentable finds
• Scan of blogosphere and google results looking
for information on given topics
– Some automation composing results with references

10. Everything is intelligent
• Any object with state can have sensors and give off
information
• Augmented objects can change state on external
request / message
• Sets of such objects can exhibit unified complex
behaviors
• Adaptive systems reconfigure within programmed
limits
– Based on past history
– Current data
– Situation models
– State machines

11. Wearable computing
• Land of cyborgs
• Feeds into senses
– Eye patch or other visual input
– Ear buds
– Haptic
• Input is still a problem – needs voice
• Getting better at external brain “mind reading”
• Power is big challenge
• Not looking like a complete cyborg is important
• Need wearable systems to record everything
– Don’t record and you can’t learn more from what you experience
– Don’t record and there is less of you in the metaverse

12. Context Aware Computing
• Who I am
• What does the system know about me?
– History
– Other sources
– Derived rolling model
• Task model
• Interest model
• Personality model..
– Feedback from user
• Where am I?
• When is this interaction taking place?
• Likely current goals
• interruptability

13. Ubiquitous computing
• Computers everywhere
• Nearby computer recognizes you
• Your working sets are in the cloud
– With proper encryption and other security
• Nearby systems load the parts of your working
set that are needed for your current activities
• Devices and systems work for you in current
location
– Depending on availability, permissions..

14. Social Computing
• Cognitive Surplus
• Approximately 1% of hours usually spent on TV gave us wikipedia.
• People are more connected/aware of more of each other’s
lives than ever before
• Group mind effects of information filtering, aggregation
and spread
• Collaborative filtering, auctions, prediction markets,
reputation systems, tagging, sorting, verification
• Methods and tools to attract hundreds to millions of minds
to useful computational tasks
– By accident and on purpose
• Collective Intelligence

15. What kind of tools to you crave?
• Brainstorm!