Machines, that are able to interact with humans in a friendly manner, also exist – we call them robots. It can be said, that they are the same software bots, but with bodies. Certainly, robots are usually more advanced as they require more efforts to get implemented, but imagine, if a robot could also become a body for soft bot… Or if it could interact with soft bots to extend own capabilities (like humans, who operate machines to do some special job). In fact, this can be treated as integration of third-party applications. The great thing about this is that for a really smart artificial intelligence such intergration should not require writing any software adapter or whatever – ones will just need to introduce the soft bot to the “hard” bot and, possibly, shortly describe the commands, the former understands (i.e., no software development is to be involved at all).
From this point of view the Jibo robot looks to be very promising. As it’s not just a gadget, that is able to recognize the predefined set of voice commands, but an artificial intelligence, that should be able to interact with systems, that have some minimal natural language interface (like Orangutan). As, in fact, it’s the same as speaking to a person with a very limited vocabulary, what Jiro seems would be able to do (I hope, it’s also would be able to use text messages internally).
When talking about Jibo, people usually compare it to Apple’s Siri (or, better to say, DARPA’s CALO, Siri is largely based on)… But, in my opinion, these systems are too different. After all, Siri is just a speaking and listening smart phone (not too exclusive feature for a phone, eh? kidding) – a kind of a soft bot. It’s definitely much more smarter than, e.g., my stupid Orangutan, but still it has many limitations, that other soft bots also do. Thus, it does has “ears” – but it does not see, can’t move its camera (luckily?), is not independent of human, and so on. Jibo, on the other side, is a full “hard” bot, who is able to hear, see, watch, move its “head”, analyze all the retrieved environmental data, express emotions and more! All these makes it an artificial intelligence device of the next, higher level. Therefore, comparing Siri to Jibo, for me, is like comparing a car to an airplane. The era of the devices like Jibo is just only about to start and we are barely going to learn their benefits and to realize, how and where they could be used. Thus, I personally see many potentials of integrations. And they are not just about interaction with soft bots…
Did I tell you, that Jibo is going to have API (and SDK)?.. You know, what this means, eh?.. Right, Jibo is also going to have its own… app store with third-party apps, that will implement new capabilities for the robot. For apps Jiro will provide JavaScript based API and a special visual dialog building tool, that will look like Scratch.
Unfortunately, currently I did not see any plans of Jibo developers to support third-party integrations through the natural language interface, but, I believe, it’s inevitably will be added in future (robots will need to communicate between themselves anyway and writing a special protocol for this looks to be odd)… But Jibo will be able to get new awesome capabilities even with the currently planned SDK (they will just require some development). For example, these could be:
These are only some of the obvious probable new capabilities of this amazing robot. And there will be much more of them as soon as the IT community admits it as a new gadget (and will start thinking more on how it can be used)…
Thus, as a Kayako developer I see many possibilities for our product as well:
Certainly, we should also always remember about the security risk, that robots like Jibo can bring into our homes or offices or whatever. Thus, Jibo could also become an excellent spy. Nevertheless, its benefits are obvious and the appearance of such gadgets is, in fact, unavoidable, so it’s the time for humans to get ready for these amazing “new family members”…
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