This AI post below got me thinking. The things are really falling into place, and it's not as farfetched as it was just a couple of years ago to make AI based intelligent helpers. Consider this for a minute; we have web services APIs all over the place, we have voice servers and automatic speech recognition which is really getting quite good (we use this stuff for our services, so I know it's true) and we have all kinds of knowledge and experience re. adaptive learning systems. Processing power is becoming dirt cheap and networking is now a snap thanks to W-LAN.
So let's look at a scenario. A guy that helps you grocery shop. Place a mike near your fridge. Connect said mike to network and server running somewhere. Activate food and grocery related grammar when fridge door is open. If you say "We're out of milk" Grocery Guy makes a note that you need milk. When you go shopping you ask Grocery Guy to send you the shopping list, which he does via SMS - or you can just call him and have him recite it. Heck, with on-line grocery shopping, you could have Grocery Guy do the shopping via the On-Line Grocers Web service API.
This is a really simple example, but just imagine all the little things you could train such a guy to do. "Is there anything on TV tonight?" is another fairly good example. Using techniques quite well understood today, you can make TV Guy learn your likes and dislikes. If you have a TiVo or some such thing, and it provides access to your viewing habits, TV Guy can learn by observation, eliminating the need for explicit training - or at least minimizing the need.
Now if only I had a girlfriend with a masters degree in AI, access to a voice server, and my own AI based authoring system with a web service interface, then I might get these things one day ; )
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