I remember reading a while ago about a voice-recognition customer service dealie that was supposed to detect stress and modulate its actions accordingly. (In theory, so that angry customers could get to a real person faster and thereby become less angry.) Did that ever go anywhere?

A recent Bill O'Reilly Moment:

In the weeks to come, we'll cover the story in a fair and balanced way, even giving the benefit of the doubt to The New York Times. But there is no doubt, ladies and gentlemen that The Times has been unfair in its coverage of the Bush White House. And the paper also routinely uses personal attacks to hurt people with whom it disagrees. If that does not stop, Bill Keller and Frank Rich to name the two main culprits, will not have a happy new year. As they say in the auction world, fair warning.

Yes he is actually threatening people, what a jerk.

In context, [link]

Oh! I didn't know that was the sort of VR you meant. I still think of that as pattern matching.

See, that's the thing. That kind of pattern-matching used to be hard, even for a single user; now you're used to it and you think of it as easy. When an AI application hits the mainstream, you don't think of it as AI any more.

And incidentally, just because something's sucky doesn't mean it isn't an instance of the class. O'Hare Airport is still an airport. "Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire" is still a TV show. George W. Bush is still a human being.

George W. Bush is still a human being.

Emmett disputes this.

That kind of pattern-matching used to be hard, even for a single user; now you're used to it and you think of it as easy.

But being hard doesn't make it AI. That's my whole wondering--what is resource intensive computing, what's extended problem solving, and what's intelligence? Does any of that lead to artificial sentience?

Was it hard because you couldn't harness the power in something usefully small? Was it hard because we didn't know how to do it yet? Why didn't we know? How fuzzy is the logic? How heuristic? How independent?

just because something's sucky doesn't mean it isn't an instance of the class

But can also make it not an instance. How big a failure does a spoon have to be as a piece of underwear to not be one? Just because I'm calling this piece of metal clothing doesn't make it so.

I don't know who this is in response to and which article but I agree that the sf chron article about trend pieces managed to be guilty most of the exact same sins-- fudging, hedging, observation posing as proof, and speculation.

bon bon, here: DavidS "Natter 41: Why Do I Click on ita's Links?!" Jan 4, 2006 11:54:47 am PST

Here's a trend: Every newspaper is annoying! See Times, New York; and Chronicle, San Francisco.

I'm going through a bit of a Music Man phase.

Amish Rodney on the auction block!

Amish Rodney on the auction block!

This is why you are the wind beneath my wings.

Well, AI is a huge umbrella of computer science topics, a lot of things that individually wouldn't be considered "intelligent".

I think though at some point we will see software that interacts so much like a sentient being that it will be difficult to not call it sentient. However you won't be able to point to any single part of it and say that's what did it, that's what crossed the line.