In one of my earlier posts on ‘Top 5 Characteristics to Look for In Intelligent Software Agents’ I had mentioned Siri – a silicon-vallye start-up focusing on building virtual software assistants. Recently, I found this demo of Siri done for TechCrunch.
Back to our five characteristics of Intelligent Software Agents, there is no doubt that the software is Rational. Based on simple queries from the user, the software goes through a logical process of understanding what the user is asking for. For example, when you say ‘I want to see Angels and Demons’ it figures out it is a new movie and shows you the theatres where the movie is being screened. Ideally, the next plausible action might be that I want to read the book ‘Angels and Demons’. We can go on to less plausible actions, such as wanting to see a picture of Angels and a picture of Demons and so on. Not sure if the software is ‘smart’ enough to infer alternative goals and intentions of the user. In that sense, the software is probably Purposeful in a limited way.
The other characteristics of being Social, Autonomous, and Emotional are not exhibited (at least in the demo). This might be a deliberate design choice. When the user is goal-oriented, you probably don’t want a software agent to start a conversation e.g., start talking about the movie plot and the author of the book and so on. Nor would you want the software agent to be autonomous in pro-actively booking tickets to the movie or airline tickets based on their calendar without confirming first with the users.
Irrespective of how successful Siri is, I am sure we will be seeing more of these kind of applications appear for iPhone and other mobile devices.
Tags: Autonomous, Emotional, intelligent agents, iPhone, Purposeful, Rational, Sevaks, Silicon Valley, Siri, Social, software agents
