The Virtual Teacher

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from Illinois and Florida are developing a networking system which will create virtual representations of real people to improve our knowledge. They will use artificial intelligence and natural language processing software to enable us to interact with these avatars. The goal of the project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to give us the possibility to interact with these virtual representations as if they were the actual person, complete with the ability to understand and answer questions. We should see the results at the beginning of 2008 — if the researchers succeed."

Vacuous article

[nebaz]

Summary of article (IMHO):

        Guess what. In the future, we will create avatars that will look and sound just like real people. To see how far along we are, take a look at some of these avatars

      (decent graphical images, which not an AI make)

      There's some money from the NSF to continue this effort.

      Really smart guys are working on ways to get realistic sounding voices and
      mannerisms.

      We're using motion capture too.

      Is this commercially viable? We'll have to see.


First of all, this virtual avatar stuff is icing on the cake. The first (easiest) Turing test implementation does not require body language, realistic avatars, or
mannerisms, and we are still YEARS from that. What makes anyone think that this is remotely possible by next year?

P.S. The submitter's name seems familiar. Where have I heard it before?

 

Sounds a bit like...

[Jhon]

True Names by Vernor Vinge to me...

A bit inaccurate....

[qw0ntum]

Ronald left out the part about the system being powered by cold fusion! Seriously, is it realistic to expect researchers to figure out how to digitize someone's entire personality and knowledge in less than a year?

Allergies are blocking my nose, but I can still smell the stench of sensationalism with this one.

Never Send A Machine To Do A Man's Job

[vivaoporto]

I doubt we will see any meaningful result soon on this field. First because AI is not at this advanced point yet (in order to provide improvisation and interactivity), and the use of pre-recorded images and sounds cannot cope with the ingenuity and the unpredictability of the students. Second because human beings, although very sympathetic to the idea of talking heads (just look at clippy), in the long run get bored of it.

On the other side, I already had a couple of teachers that were completely inept to their jobs, following scripts just like a computer program with pre-recorded footage would. But computers are very unlikely to come even near to advantages a real good teacher can provide.

Re:Vacuous article

[countach]

It doesn't have to pass the Turing test, it merely has to be a useful teaching aid. A much lower standard to reach.