déjà vu

When I was a kid, I could only think of computers through sci-fi tv serials on DD. Computers were portrayed as a person with all great wisdom. Whatever you ask it has all the answer.

Now when I think back, I wonder how simple interface we talk about but I could hardly see any around.

Last night a friend referred me a site Ikea.ca . There was a simple interface for automated chat assistant program "Anna". A simple Eliza like chat program, with a twist. What ever you talk about related to ikea, the other pages is automatically redirects it to that page. (Reminds me of our AI course assignment of GoSSIP, a similar chat bot for IIT-Madras with different learning modes but didn't redirect the user to those pages.)

I'm not sure how well "Anna" is programmed in comparison with ALICE or other similar program but I liked the way the technology has been used for better use.

"Anna" animation looks very primitive, I found a better animation demo at haptek.com

Later I saw a " 2D to 3D image transformation" demo from a single image done by research team in CMU.

There are good enough "Speech to text" technologies available.

I just had a wild dream, what if you combine all these and make a single powerful application.

• Speech-to-text
• Search(I'm feeling lucky ;-) )
• answer the question
• redirect user to relevant places
• Emote as per user interaction
• Talk 2 user (text to speech)

I guess every kid in this world would like to create his own skin(interface) depending on whom he thinks knows everything.