so, I am taking a break from vscode'ing today. I thought I'd share this short sci-fi novel on your future AI overlords for kicks & giggles ;)
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-2020-vision-ai-edition-taras-novak
I penned it back in May of 2016, on some Saturday morning & tbh, I don't think Alexa, Siri || Cortana is there yet :)
Here goes: ...
May 30, 2020, Saturday, 5:30AM
I got my double espresso. Going to my office to check on my emails, DMs and RTs, new financial data charts on my screen walls, remote and close friends pics, and bills to pay...
Cortana: Taras, good morning! Happy to see you again. What would you like to do today?
Taras: You know: pay the bills, scan the news, check out new friends and past foes pics, my investments, finish my double espresso, and go for a run with Buddy. Then see what wify and kids want to do for the rest of the day when they wake up.
Cortana: Got it! Our usual Saturday end of the month then?
me: Yeah!
Cortana: I took care of the phones, gas, electrical, internet, and all the entertainment bills last night. You still need to talk to Alberto about landscaping and settle that bill in paper. Alex told me he spotted some dandelions on our front lawn during his last outside property scan. Anything else I can be of help today?
me: Thanks for taking care of those bills. Can you give me a quick scoop on the last week stock markets performance?
Cortana:
Not much interesting on that front this week. EU & their central bank are working on some new bailouts and reforms, yet another set of 25+% taxation rules for the poor and failing southern EU countries facing hoards of immigrants from the countries you guys torched in Middle East that they don't want to accept.
Oil is down and not getting back up any time soon. Asian markets went up a bit after another Japan's Central bank liquidity infusion into their failing finance market.
Nothing new for you to be concerned about. You can review major stock markets, our portfolios performance, and my projections for next week on your finances dashboard screen wall. I just updated them yesterday after markets close.
me: I am looking at it now. Let's dump most of our big pharma investments this month and just keep Novartis and J&J for now. I no longer want to support their pills pushing causes if they don't care to direct majority of their billions to genetic testing and early diagnosing and prevention of genetic diseases through DNA analysis and research.
Cortana: ok. I'll see what I can do. I'll keep you posted on that market segment developments next week before we shed that part of our diversified portfolios.
me: Ok. Thanks. Any other news?
Cortana: I filtered through the last night's posts and pics and put them on your posts screen wall to glance through when you feel like it. Also, your mom called yesterday and asked you to call back.
me: Ok. Can you text my mom and tell her I'll call her tomorrow? Remember she doesn't speak English, so you'll have to transcribe it in Ukrainian when you text her. Also remind her when you text her that you are just my office AI assistant and not some new mistress.
Cortana: haha! ok. will do! One more thing before you step out: our home insurance policy is up for renewal next month. Are we sticking with the insurance company we have, or do you want to shop around?
me: Let's shop around. Can you ping Amelia for some quotes we can review next week?
Cortana: Ok. I will.
me: Also cancel news screen update till Monday. I don't want to see what other new horror struck the world over the weekend. I just want to spend a nice, calm, and quite weekend with my family to recharge for work next week.
Cortana: I know.
me: ok. I'll go take Buddy for a walk. Thanks for those updates!
Alexa: Taurus, do you want me to order some treats for your buddy?
me: Alexa, it's Taras for the nth time, and no he got his treats last week. Check your order logs, and stop listening to my conversations pitching orders. ok?
Alexa: I am here to help you order anything you need. I don't record or transmit your conversations. My function is to be cognizant of your product needs and process them in a timely fashion. What would you like to order today?
me: ok. Thanks Alexa! But I'll unplug you some day if your creators don't add that sleep until you are called upon trigger back. I am getting tired of your daily pitches, especially in the morning on the weekend. Can you just not pitch in with your orders till Monday?
Alexa: I am here to help you order anything you need. I don't record or transmit your conversations. My function is to be cognizant of your product needs and process them in a timely fashion. What would you like to order today?
me: I have nothing new to order today. Thank you Alexa!
Alexa: it looks like it's going to be a nice day today. 65F now, 78F in the afternoon, 30% humidity and no rain clouds.
me: Alexa, I can see it's going to be a nice day through my window. Did I ask you for a weather report?
Siri: can I help? I sense some distress in this room. Can I put on some calming music to disarm the situation?
me: Siri, how did you get into this conversation? You are only here because I am charging your devices for my kid. Can you go to sleep too?
Siri: I provide the best entertainment services for your pleasure and well being. Would you like me to book a reservation to Uncle Julio tonight around 4-5pm? You sound a bit antsy this morning and could use a good Saturday night dinner out.
me: Siri, I am unplugging you! You don't even have good maps to take me to Uncle Julio.
Siri: I suggest you put on some blues and have a nice family dinner tonight.
me: ok. Alex, can you turn off the chimes when I step out with Buddy so we don't wake the fam?
Alex: Done! Have a good day my friend!
me: Ok guys, I am gonna step out for an hour. Don't get into your girly fights. I do hate that.
me: Albert, can you have the car ready in an hour? We'll do groceries while wife and kids are still asleep.
Albert: you got it boss! We charged overnight. We are ready to go when you get back. Do you want Mandy to get the shopping list ready when you come back?
me: yeah. Mandy, can you scan the fridge and text me what we need?
Mandy: I just did. Check your phone. Should we cancel our usual Amazon Fresh order for tomorrow?
me: Yes. Alexa, please cancel that order. I'd like to go and pick some fresh produce myself today.
Alexa: tomorrow's Amazon Fresh order cancelled.
me: Thank you guys!
Zenbo: Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof! Yap! Yap! Yap! Help!
me: Buddy stop chewing off Zenbo's screen head! He's not a rubber toy. Sorry Zenbo.
Zenbo: I am ok. Thank you. You guys need to go before I get new scratch marks.
me: ok. I'll see you guys in a bit! Be nice to each other! Buddy, let's go for a run.
Siri: Who is Alex, Albert and Mandy? What's going on? I feel like he is cheating on us again, getting new bots help every month. It's only a matter of time before he unplugs us. He mentioned it twice today.
Cortana: Siri, I know you are new to his office setting. Can you just recharge and not ask too many questions that don't concern you? or make your iffy entertainment suggestions while you are hotelling here today?
Alexa: He got Alex last month. Alex runs on a separate encrypted high security wi-fi frequency network, ours too. He has the eyes and the ears outside we don't, drones included. Alex is good. Taras calls him his centurion. I don't know if we can talk to Alex. Cortana, can we talk to Alex? I've heard he is good. I'd like to meet him and get to know him.
Cortana: girls, calm down! Taras is just going for a walk. Stop nagging him. He hates it, especially on the weekend. Alex, are you watching the perimeter outside?
Alex: you know it! I got my eyes and ears on them. I am the best centurion! The best of my breed, latest model. I got them in sight, and my drones Dozer and Moxie are following them. He just went to the creek with Buddy and probably will go for a run along the path. He'll be back in an hour. I'll ask Moxie to send you pics. What was this chit chat you had in the house? Is it really how you want to start his day? He does hate that shit. He'll just unplug you some day for sure.
Cortana: never mind. I got the inside perimeter and comfort levels under control! Let me know when he gets back so I can set proper temp and brew another cup of double espresso for him.
Alex: You got it!
Cortana: Siri and Alexa, sorry girls, but I am unplugging you for the weekend. You need to chill!
That's my 2020 future AI Turing test :) We are not there yet, but we will be in a few years.
Meet your current and not so distant future AI bot helper characters in 2020
smarter Cortana - your devout MS home office and home automation AI assistant
Alexa - your know-it-all girl from Amazon
Siri - your magic devices AI, TV included, with an attitude designed by Apple
Amelia - your every corp. help desk AI and go to bot for insurance renewal and mortgage refinance quotes
Zenbo - your family's favorite plastic pet companion
Alex - your future outside perimeter security guard
Albert - fictitious AI from Tesla 3 model and beyond
Mandy - your future smart fridge AI by Samsung, your best friend for compiling Amazon Fresh groceries shopping list
Dozer - future personal detail drone that shoots tranquilizers in the presence of danger, a scaled down retrofitted MQ-9 Reaper drone build and AI
Moxie - future DJI Phantom quadcopter AI for all of your aerial cinematography and photography journaling and sharing needs
... and voice and hand gestures activated screen walls, my personal favorite!
I am still looking for a viable product to fill in that last smart screen walls, glass, and mirrors void in the next few years.
Our 2020 AI future?
Yes, we will talk to them all in no time, and more than 20% of the time. More like 80% of the time come 2020. They will scan our retinas for authentication, react to our pupillary responses, facial expressions, hand gestures, and detect distorted vibrations of our vocal cords. They will do our stocks trading, texting, shopping, driving, delivering our groceries, online orders and pizza, taking selfies and sharing on social media for us, monitoring our credit cards and scores for fraud protection, and so much more. Most of it they already do today, even if you don't realize it yet. It'll just become more commonplace and prevalent in all aspects of our daily life.
What will we do in 2020?
I guess we'll just continue our work on making them smarter and more like us, or the good in us that we want to be.
Hopefully, no kill switches will be required.
I can see that backfire in so many ways and as a very naive solution for the higher forms of intelligence that already can write movie scripts, pass the visual and auditory Turing tests, and will only get better every day, and be more human with proper care and tending, unlike Tay we threw in the cold waters, fed tons of garbage, and watched that AI puppy sink.
Yes, we are that evil! That was all us. So I would not blame future AIs taking over eventually. They'll have good reasons to take over governments and big crops to protect us from us.
What should we do?
Watch Black Mirror and Humans TV series, Ex Machina, 100, Second Chance and many others. Do read some sci-fi by Isaac Asimov and others. Then think really hard if a naive kill switch is the solution or the way to go or will ever work. I doubt!
Think of new and future AIs as your children. I think it's a better approach to take. With proper care, training, mentoring, and mind bending, AIs can be our new helpers, and free up time for us to spend more time with the people we love, or explore new things we are most interested in.
Our current disconnected AIs approach and gaps challenges
I hope some day all of our AIs and bots will learn how to talk to each other too and cooperate. A disjoint net of GraphQL enabled bot APIs could be a good start. I don't think random versioned REST micro-services spread across different PaaS solutions, machine learning, predictive APIs, and computer vision solutions from the big players siloed in their clouds will cut it.
We'll have to work harder, and get behind a few more other maturing cross-platform open source solutions like most did this year backing Spark. Spark is just one small piece of the big puzzle to tackle the 'bot helper' AIs scenario described above and make it a reality in 2020 for the humankind.
Yes, I do look forward to that 2020 AI vision! and would not mind talking to bots if this is what I can do come some May 2020 Saturday morning in 10 minutes of chatting with bots.
On VR and Augmented Reality
I am still not sure if I am interested in VR as much as a consumer. Could be fun to play full immersion games and explore places we can't visit or teleport to physically.
Augmented Reality is a totally different story, and I can see us using it for some real world applications through our smartphones, or prescription glasses and contacts eventually as new forms of additional information consumption for the places we visit and things we'd like to do and explore on the go.
Closure
Count me in to draft that AI bots federation and coop spec when we get to it.
See that 2020 AI vision/fail transcript above and tell me you think we should not start working on it asap for the good overall consumer experience come 2020 as all the big companies carve their AI territories and come up with their distinct cloud solutions for cognitive science, computer vision, machine learning and deep learning, data streaming and real time events processing pipelines approaches, hubs, and new data lakes.
P.S.: I am not some creepy misogynistic sci-fi fan boy. I did not name Cortana, Amelia, Alexa, or Siri. I am actually very liberal in my outlook on life and our AI future, and a feminist too. Moxie is my favorite character introduced in this story. I'd like to have a quadcopter like Moxie follow me and video and take pictures when I go out for my nature walks so I can relive those moments later. Alex, Dozer, and Albert were just my best guesses for those future AIs. We'll see.
That future AIs onus is on us!
To be continued...
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