MediaBerkman

What if a robot could be your closest friend? Know everything about you? Be able to peruse old family photos with you, read your journal entries, know what you are allergic to, and all your deepest darkest secrets?

Put all those romantic notions of science fiction out of your mind. “Digital Companions” are seen by some as a natural extension of computers and the web – and possible within 30 years.

Yorick Wilks is a leading researcher on the Companions Project. We sat down with him to find out more about Digital Companions in our every day life.

Listen:
or download
…also in Ogg!

This week’s artist:
Robert Rich: Cowell Piano

The Reference Section:
Yorick’s homepage
The Companions Project
The Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard
Yorick also spoke recently at Harvard on the future of Digital Companions

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See a partial transcript after the jump.

Radio Berkman 138: My Friend the Robot

Could your best friend be a robot? The answer to this question and more on this week’s Radio Berkman.

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It sounds like the stuff of movies and graphic novels – robots, side by side with humans, operating as fully functional servants to our needs. But the engineers behind the Companions Project have embarked on a massive international project to make – Embodied Conversational Agents – they avoid the term “robots” and comparisons to science fiction – a utility in every day life.

These Digital Companions are thought as natural extensions of the web – instead of turning your typed query for pizza places in Boston into a basic search of Google – a digital companion could hear you say “I Want Pizza!”, and be able to find a pizza place, nearby, that is open at the time, is within your meager budget, can deliver fast since it sounds like you’re really hungry – and has just that special kind of pizza you like – you know the one with sardines, pickled garlic, and mashed sweet potatoes that no one else likes.

So it’s definitely more than a way of searching the web – it’s a machine that can hear your voice, understand what you’re saying, understand the meaning of what you are saying, and help you organize your digital life. One researcher, Yorick Wilks, a professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield in the UK, is looking into applications for digital companions beyond just helping you with every day wants and needs – but becoming a device that understands you, that can be a vessel for your thoughts, ideas, and memories, a true and loyal friend – (which you’ll really need if you keep eating pizza with sardines, garlic, and sweet potatoes).

How and when could Digital Companions start appearing in our lives? We sat down with Yorick to find out.

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Yorick Wilks is a professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and a researcher on the Companions Project. You kind find out more about Yorick and the Digital Companions Project, including links to a recent talk he gave at Harvard, at our website, http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkma…

This week’s Radio Berkman was produced by me, Daniel Dennis Jones, with the help of the Center for Research on Computation and Society, from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Metadata:

Yorick’s homepage:
 http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~yorick/

The Companions Project:
 http://www.companions-project.org/

CRCS:
 http://crcs.seas.harvard.edu/

Yorick’s talk:
 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mediaberkma…

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