The Lamisphere

In the April 15th edition of the Christian Science Monitor, I had the priviledge of providing analysis and commentary of MIT’s “Sixth Sense” device.  For the uninitiated, Sixth Sense is a conglomeration of wearable mobile tools (webcam, 3G modem, micro-projector and palmtop computer) that together collect data about the world around the wearer, and superimpose data from the cloud on top of physicality.

The full article is here: http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/04/15/sixth-sense-a-web-you-can-wear/

You can see a video of the device here:



Some choice quotes:

But observers are already envisioning future improvements to Sixth Sense that could result in some startling possibilities.

“Its current representation is a pretty fun parlor trick that has the roots of being a transformative capability down the road,” says Jonas Lamis, founder of the advanced technology research and consulting firm SciVestor in Austin, Texas.

Among Mr. Lamis’s predictions: Sixth Sense’s current projector will eventually give way to contact lenses that overlay data directly onto a person’s field of vision.

In places where we now find fixed advertisements, like posters or billboards, we will see ads calibrated to our exact location and interests, he says. We will effortlessly access virtual conversations, like those on Twitter, about the people, places, and events we come across in person.

And Sixth Sense-type computers with advanced facial recognition capabilities, Lamis says, might show information about the people we pass on the street. We would know if he donated to a political candidate, if she writes an environmentally themed blog, or if he appears in a database of registered child predators – all in real time.

“People in different areas are thinking about this as viable for consumers down the road,” Lamis says. “It [will have] really profound implications for how [we] ultimately see the world.”

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Articles, Artificial Intelligence, Business, Disruption, Intelligent Agents, Just Plain Cool, Video, iPhone | | #

“I’d pretty much pissed away most of my Whuffie — all the savings from the symphonies and the first three theses — drinking myself stupid at the Gazoo, hogging library terminals, pestering profs, until I’d expended all the respect anyone had ever afforded me.” — Cory Doctorow, Down And Out in the Magic Kingdom, 2003

“There are perennial discussions of trust metrics for things like automatic sysopping and (a) general “reputation management” system.  It is rightly pointed out (by me and many others!) that such systems are difficult to design properly and often easy to “game”.  At the same time, the hope is that a well-designed system would be scalable and informative, while not oppressive or empowering of tyrants.”  — Jimmy Whales, 2004

In the not too distant future, trust and transparency will become incredibly important issues for the Web.  In a world where increasingly powerful virtual online agents begin to act as proxies for decision making that we humans currently perform, there will become myriad opportunities for disreputable firms to compromise these agents, influencing the decisions that they take against the will of the person they are acting on behalf of.

You might be surprised by how many purchasing decisions robots already make.  Black-box trading systems on Wall Street and across the financial markets accounted for over 1/3 of all stock trades in 2006, and will push 50% of volume in 2010 according to the consulting firm Aite Group.   Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems and other standards based protocols in manufacturing, logistics, and procurement frequently execute purchasing decisions with little or no human intervention.  You can event train Amazon.com to automatically send you items based on a schedule you teach it.

What all three of these systems have put in place is an automated system for buying things without having to have a human in the middle of the decision-making process.   While Amazon fulfillment might be a simple algorithm, the underlying models for some algorithmic trading systems are as complex as any logic process that you might execute to decide what stocks to buy and when.

In the next few years, we will see web-based services emerge that want to offer that level of “decision-making by proxy” for many of the tasks that you perform manually online today.  Things like booking airline flights, making dinner reservations, scheduling appointments and buying goods and services are being targeted for automation by this new class of intelligent agent technology (see the Do Button).

The challenge that emerges is figuring out a “trust model” that will allow these agents broad latitude to execute on your desire while maintaining a high level of transparency that they are acting in your best interest, rather than being unduly influenced by third parties (perhaps through favored relationships with the agent provider).

I’m reminded of the recent dust-up around Facebook data.  If you think that having a service like Facebook turn on you and not release your data is wrong, wait until your trusted execution service suddenly decides to change how it behaves because of a new partnership the provider put in place.

Obviously, this kind of conflict could damage the growth potential for intelligence agent technologies.  I’m worried that investors in these firms will look at all of the monetization strategies that such a powerful tool will bring in the near term, and make value judgments about the level of objectivity that such a system might require without considering the broader issues of trust and transparency.

I suspect that this problem will not be easily solved. Modeling trust for an intelligent agent will require an understanding of a great many variables:

1. Beliefs and biases of the user.
2. Beliefs and biases of the user’s trusted network of social relationships
3. Transparent knowledge of the biases of the intelligent agent provider
4. A model for trading degraded transparency for reward
5. A model for adjusting all of the above over time and circumstance

If I am right about how large an impact the Intelligent Agent industry will have on society in the decade ahead, it is incumbent upon interested parties today begin to address these issues in an open and collaborative format.

No Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, Intelligent Agents, Semantic Web | | #

On November 15th and 16th, a remarkable un-conference will take place.  Convergence 08 is being hosted at The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.  The event is sponsored by a group  of long-term-philanthropy non-profits: The Foresight Institute, Humanity +, Imminst.org, The Singularity Institute, The Long Now Foundation, The Methuselah Foundation, and CyBeRev.

Paul Saffo keynotes, and three panels have been programmed.  The rest of the scheduled two days is left to the attendees to collaborate on topics of relevance to the community.  The three panels, posed as “debates”, are focused on synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and longevity intervention.

I have the distinct pleasure of moderating the artificial intelligence debate which brings together four leading thinkers in this area:

• Ben Goertzel, Novamente, Singularity Institute
• Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google
• Steve Omohundro, Self-Aware Systems
• Barney Pell, Founder of Powerset, Strategist at Microsoft

For one hour, we will a conduct a very different AI debate: not whether to create AI, or which technical path will work fastest, but “How can we use AI technology to build the world we want to live in?”

Some of the things I want to know:

• Technology policy and politics:  What advice do you have to President-elect Obama on the future of technology enhanced humanity?
• Haves vs. have-nots:  Is there a growing gap between haves and have-nots?  If so, should we look towards AI to address it?
• Potential outcomes:  Viewing the distribution of future outcomes (imagine a normal distribution), it seems that accelerating technology capability will push probabilities towards the tails:  Exceedingly wonderful or terrible.  How can we use AI technology to push towards a favorable outcome for humanity?
• Governance mechanisms:  I heard a commentator say that this just past election will likely be the most important election of our lifetime.  What about the election of 2048 that pits enhanced human vs. sentient machine?  What kinds of governance systems should we put in place now to inform the world we want in 2048?

What kinds of questions would you like answered by the esteemed panel?  I’d welcome your input.

3 Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Convergence08 | | #

Michael Sean Wright of Nice Fish Films recorded a podcast with me today. Billed as “a discussion with really big thinkers”, we talked about The Singularity Summit and some of my favorite emerging technologies. You can hear the podcast below.

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Brain Machine Interface, Futurism, Intelligent Agents, Robotics, SciVestor, Semantic Web, Singularity Summit, Siri, Twine, Twitter | | #

Still considering attending the Singularity Summit this weekend?  We’ve got fewer than 50 seats remaining for the main event on Saturday, and the Friday emerging technology workshop is over subscribed.  Here is a teaser of what the day will be about. Hope you can join us!

No Comments | In: Accelerating Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Disruption, Futurism, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Singularity Summit, Uncertainty | | #

When I think about the future of the internet and “Web 3.0″, I generally don’t dwell on haptic displays or fully-immersive virtual worlds. Rather I think about the Do Button.  I’ve given a series of talks this year on emerging technologies that will change the world, and one of the main topics covered has been looking at how semantic tools will morph into stronger AI as they become process oriented.

In my world of 2012, the Google home page of the future looks amazingly similar to the home page of today.  The Google search button is relabeled “Do It”, and the logo now sports a techno-color “Agent” appendage.  While the number of pixels changed is relatively small, the implications to a web-engaged society is enormous.

Behind the “Do It” click is a semantic processor that takes the natural language command (e.g. Schedule a date with Kathryn for tomorrow night) and determines the context of the sentence:

• Who is Kathryn?
• What is a “date”?
• When is tomorrow night?
• Is Kathryn available?
• Where is this request to take place?
• What kinds of dates do Jonas and Kathryn like to conduct?
• What needs to be scheduled in order for them to have a date?
• Is a baby sitter available?
• Is a table available?

From there, the process engine goes into action.  Each task is executed through the complex decision-tree of “date scheduling”, ultimately resulting in a text message to my iPhone “Date with Kathryn scheduled, click here for details”.

How the tasks occur may be based on training done to the system on a per user basis, but more likely is based on a collaborative training scheme where you can have your agent execute tasks that were learned by someone elses’ agent in your trusted network.

I’ve pegged the emergence of the Do Button at 2012.  But recent events make me think I have over shot by 3 years.  I’m keeping an eye on a certain Stealth Company that might be scheduling dates for my wife and I within the next 12 months.

4 Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Google, Just Plain Cool, Semantic Web, Siri | | #

Press release from Lamar University

Technology innovation in the coming decade will be unlike anything the world has seen, and corporations, small businesses and individuals will have to paddle hard to catch this wave — or they might just be ripped asunder. So says Jonas Lamis, executive director of SciVestor (www.scivestor.com ), a research and advisory firm focused on understanding how future technologies will disrupt the business, economic and social frameworks of society.

Lamis will speak as a part of the IES Entrepreneurship Lecture series at 11 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 2, in the Landes Auditorium of the Galloway Business Building.

At the lecture, Lamis will cover understanding the law of accelerating returns; how semantic technologies and Artificial Intelligence will change the future of the Web; Green autonomy – how robotics and AI are redesigning the automobile and changing the climate-crisis debate; the emerging science of longevity medicine and what it might mean to people; and a framework for thinking about the potential value of new concepts and companies.

Lamis is also the director of partnerships at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (www.singinst.org), a consortium focused on developing a framework for safe advanced artificial intelligence, primarily through research and software development. He manages partnerships between the business and investment communities, and SIAI.

Lamis is an active contributor on topics of futurism and business at several blogs, including Singularity University (www.singularityu.org), Robot Central (robotcentral.com) and SIAI Blog (www.singinst.org/blog/).

Lamis also is the founder and editor of Architecture & Governance magazine, a publication focused on helping large IT organizations plan and manage major transformation initiatives. The quarterly magazine is circulated to approximately 15,000 key IT decision-makers.

In the last decade, Lamis has held executive and managerial roles in several venture-backed software companies.  Prior to founding SciVestor, he was the vice president of alliances and vice president of corporate marketing at Troux Technologies. He holds a master of business administration from the University of Texas, a master of science from Georgia Institute of Technology and a bachelor of science in industrial engineering from Purdue University.

Lamar’s Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, headed by Russ Waddill, entrepreneur-in-residence of the College for Business, stimulates economic development and diversification in Southeast Texas by addressing the needs of current entrepreneurs and small businesses while simultaneously enhancing the education of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. Since its founding in 2001, the institute has engaged in research to benefit the region, working closely with local chambers of commerce, economic development agencies and city and county leaders.

Within the College of Business, students can major in entrepreneurship receiving a bachelor in business administration — general business entrepreneurship. New curriculum has also led to the creation of a minor in entrepreneurship for non-business majors, which is open to all disciplines on campus. Courses offered to the public to assist in developing business ideas, networking and finding venture capital help put wings to inspiration for students, entrepreneurs and small businesses alike.

The Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies presents lectures twice each year that adhere to the institution’s mission statement: “to stimulate economic development and diversification in Southeast Texas by addressing the needs of current entrepreneurs and small businesses, while simultaneously enhancing the education of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs.”

No Comments | In: Anti-Aging, Artificial Intelligence, Events, Futurism, Robotics, Semantic Web | | #

SciVestor sat down with Dewey Gaedcke, Founder and CEO of Minggl.com.  He discusses the future of the social grid, how Moore’s Law is powering Web 2.0, and why companies and investors should care about Minggl.

No Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, SciVestor, Semantic Web, Video | | #

SciVestor sat down with Doug Lenat, AI pioneer, founder and CEO of Cycorp. He discusses how Cycorp might change the world in the next 10 years, why Moore’s Law is important, and why businesses should be interested in AI.  View the video here: http://scivestor.blip.tv/#926947

No Comments | In: Artificial Intelligence, Cycorp, SciVestor | | #

I’m blogging Gartner Symposium down in Orlando this week.  My favorite session so far is: Generation Virtual: How a 40th-Level Half-Elf From Secaucus, New Jersey Will Change Your Business, by Gartner Analyst Adam Sarner.

I’ve been attending Gartner Symposium for the last 5 years (as part of my day job at an enterprise software company), but have only recently seen any recognition from Gartner that there is a relationship between their heavily IT crowd and the emergence of transformative technologies like virtual worlds and AI.

Of course, they cast this presentation in the “mavericks” track so as not to scare the assembled techies too much, but the very fact that Gartner is investing research dollars into this space is a bell-weather in my opinion.

Adam’s predictions:

• All you need is love: By 2015, 2% of people in the U.S. will be married to people they will never meet in person.

• A convenient truth: By 2015, time spent online will compete with the real world becoming the most “green” activity, reducing the average person’s overall carbon footprint by more than 50%.

• The dot-com bomb: Sales and marketing of products and services to virtual personas will “explode,” overtaking B2C spending by 2020.

• The day the earth stood still: By 2020, more than 70% of R&D investment in personal robotics will shift to virtual personal assistants.

• Mayor McBlank: A city will elect a virtual anonymous persona for mayor by 2020.

One of Sarner’s more powerful memes was the relationship between Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the emergence of Virtual worlds and AIs. Sarner believes that the virtual world is providing the “self-actualization” that Maslow forecast, but few have been able to achieve in Meatspace.

The latter half of his presentation focused on the emergence of personal AIs – what he called “persona bots”. His take:

In 2017, the persona bot will be mass adopted (more than 20 million active persona bot users in the U.S. alone; more than 10 million in the rest of the world). The drivers for this mass adoption are primarily the persona bot’s time shifting/time saving ability, and ability and authority to carry out tasks on the user’s behalf. The persona bot’s strength will be its ability to be at many virtual places at once, seeking vast amounts of territory, while filtering back and reporting on relevant information.

 

Just as the customer will have the persona bot as a “killer application,” companies will have their own automated bot for critical relationship handling, such as sales, customer service and marketing. By 2010, more than 15% of B2C Fortune 1000 companies with a Web site will use a chat bot for online customer service. Top drivers, such as 24/7 presence and the ability to communicate domain expertise, will help customers navigate their way toward a purchase. A practice already used is text-based hybrid bots with the ability to start an automated conversation with a customer, then alert a live representative to take over the avatar once a lead is qualified. Eventually, companies will need to develop an interaction process around a fully automated persona bot gathering information from a fully automated company bot.

Sarner’s recommendations to the assembled IT intelligentsia:

• Companies should organize and target products and services online based on mankind’s journey toward self-actualization.
• Sell to the persona, not the person. A persona will show you how it wants to be treated.
• Create virtual environments as a way to orchestrate customer exploration toward purchases.
• Shift from collecting demographic data to psychographic data for understanding online persona behavior and its interaction with others.
• Shift Investment from known customers to unknown ones. Focus on the influencers within the meritocracy.
• Develop and retain or outsource new skills to attract, connect, contribute and gain insight from personas and virtual environments.
• Begin to develop strategy, process and technology around relationships with persona bots as a tool for mutual exploration.

I’m glad to see that Gartner is getting on board. Their perspective will help drive attention and investment to the area.

1 Comment | In: Artificial Intelligence, Events, Futurism | | #