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After watching this brilliant video:
I’ve decided that my PhD Viva should now be conveyed through the medium of interpretive dance. Right now I just need a choreographer who’s willing to take on double-weak direct realism and the emergence of language.
A few other “Dance your PhDs” can be found here.
I’m always amazed by some of the stuff that comes out of the Rodney Brooks inspired school of
Dave Eggers presents a brilliant TED Prize wish about engaging with local schools. It’s exactly the kind of thing I was mulling over when I wrote this post. Wouldn’t it be great if communities of experts had ‘shop fronts’ that bought in members of the wider community creating opportunities for teaching, discussion and inspiration.
One of the briefs on my impending Sheffield job is to work on an experimental health and fitness agent, one that is able to discuss your fitness plans and motivate you on a daily basis. Now health and fitness is very important to me, I can usually be found sparring or running with equally insane people at 7am. When I’m not doing this I’ll be competing in triathlons or killing myself on a rock face. Mind you, I’m not any good at these things I just enjoying doing it.
And now I’m a little worried. I’m worried because I think I would be more likely to benefit from one of these:
than one of these:
One is an inspirationally designed but relatively simple robot and the other is a prototype that will require a very advanced dialogue system. The problem is that no matter how advanced the bunny, no matter how detailed the reasoning, at 6am I can just turn it off . By comparison, Clocky demands a response because it’s bloody annoying and if you’re up at 6 you might as well go for a run!
Seriously though, personal trainers and sports clubs work because if you don’t go training they will know about it. The social stigma motivates you to get up. Clocky works because if you don’t stop it it will carry on, remorselessly. Could we ever find ourselves in a situation where we go for a run on a wet December morning because if we don’t an artificial bunny will ‘know’ about it? I’m not sure, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had a personal trainer available 24/7. Well that’s one of the potential applications of my work at Sheffield University. Over the next three years I will be developing artificial companions that are able to talk about specific topics. So you could soon spend the morning discussing your diet and fitness plans with a robotic bunny rabbit and the evening talking about what’s on the T.V. This presents all sorts of challenges, how can we simulate the emotive content of a conversation? Could a robot ever tell if you’re in a bad mood? How can it get to know you? Remembering your likes, dislikes and habits. We’ve still got a long way to go as you can see from the video our current generation of companions are a little “intrusive”.
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