Since its early days, the internet has made immense progress. Where internet communication once seemed very primitive, we now see how contacting someone via the internet, whether through e-mail, instant messaging, social networks, or blog forums, is rather easy and highly accessible. Now imagine not being at your computer, but still having the ability to converse with others and share personal information through the internet. RelevanceNow CEO Liesl Capper has applied Artificial Intelligence software to the world wide web in order for such communication to be possible.
In the 1960’s, an early form of such AI was created. The first virtual personality, Eliza, was a text-chat program written by MIT AI expert Joseph Weizenbaum. Eliza conversed by taking another person’s previous statement and simply placing it into a question. For example, if a person said, “I am feeling blue today,” Eliza would most likely respond “Do you enjoy feeling blue today?” It was very easy for a person to recognize that his/her conversation was indeed with a robot. With RelevenceNow’s new web-based program MyCyberTwin, users may be a little more convinced that there is in fact another human on the other side of the conversation. By feeding the program with a vast amount of personal information, your cybertwin can respond to in depth questions provided by other MyCyberTwin users even if you’re not at the computer. When the program is used for the first time, it asks for the personal information to be filled out: First, one must choose a general personality and then answer a 30 question survey. After that, it is the user’s choice how many of the 425 questions under the 18 specific topics are answered. The more questions that are answered and the more developed the answers are, the greater ability the service has of responding (on its own) to other user’s personal questions. Another great feature of MyCyberTwin is that it can be linked to one’s Facebook, MySpace, or other social network’s profile.
MyCyberTwin is definitely a great service for people who want to meet others but don’t spend hours communicating on their computer. However, there are several flaws. Although MyCyberTwin saves the time that a person actually spends messaging and posting on the computer, it still takes several hours or even days to fill out the entire cybertwin profile. While all the questions don’t have to be answered, it would be best if they were to get the most out of the service. Also, since RelevenceNow currently has no advertising contracts, it has to charge its users to make a profit. If one’s conversation limit exceeds 500, then the user will have to pay a fee to obtain a premium membership service. Finally, as always when the internet is involved, there is a privacy issue. MyCyberTwin only saves key information provided by another user in conversation. But, if a user decides to ask or answer questions in an inappropriate manner, the other user may be on his/her computer reading the entire conversation as it progresses.
http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/18561/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/21/mycybertwin-knows-why-you-cry-but-its-something-it-can-never-d/
2 comments:
Wow Mike, This is really interesting, in the sense you can input your personal information and you can basically talk to your own "cybertwin". Another interesting idea i found (link below) that i would have never thought of is using it for your business. For example, if you want to talk to someone, but don't have the time to you can set your cyber twin to react and respond like its user and chat with a client or customer. For what its worth, i find that the idea of a cybertwin at first it may seem skeptical as to why you would want to talk to yourself, but then when you look beyond that you can see all the possibilities this type of technology can produce you can definitely see the potential in it. Im sure they will be making even greater products soon. Great post.
http://www.listio.com/web20/app/MyCyberTwin/
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