SRI's defense technology spawns civilian applications
SRI’s newfound interest in mobile and Web applications was born, in part, from a research project commissioned by the Defense Department to develop software that can learn, in an effort to create a more efficient way for the military to communicate and stay organized in the field; the project’s underlying technology, a combination of adaptive machine learning and natural-language processing, has spawned several offshoots
The film “2001: A Space Odyssey” presents a dramatic vision of the future, in which sentient robots double as secretaries, performing daily tasks and simple services for their human masters. Now, SRI International, the research institute, is hoping to bring the concept of virtual personal assistants closer to reality — without the malevolent malfunctions, of course, the New York Times’s Jenna Wortham reports.
“We are looking to augment human capability,” said Norman Winarsky, vice president for licensing and strategic programs at SRI. “But with artificial intelligence.”
Established in 1946 by Stanford University, SRI created early prototypes of the computer mouse and the technologies involved in ultrasound and HDTV. SRI does roughly 80 percent of its work for the federal government, but many of its technologies have been adapted for commercial purposes. Recently, the institute has set its sights on the mobile phone and Web market, especially on creating applications that perform personal functions.
“We have companies in every space: drug discovery, flexible circuits, new medical devices, solar, clean tech,” said Winarsky, who oversees the establishment of new companies that are spun off from SRI. “But right now, half of the companies we’re thinking of creating are strongly related to virtual personal assistants.”
Wortham writes that SRI’s newest venture is a Web-based personalized news feed, Chattertrap, that monitors what people are reading to learn what they like, and then serves up articles and links that suit their interests.
Another recent project is a mobile application, Siri, that allows people to perform Web searches by voice on a cellphone. Siri users can speak commands like “find a table at an Italian restaurant for six at 8 tonight,” and the application can translate the request and use GPS functions and search algorithms to find an answer.
Siri’s software is sophisticated enough that over time, it can even remember if someone prefers places that serve Northern Italian cuisine, rather than Sicilian, and make recommendations around that preference.
The application has already been a big hit; in April, Apple acquired Siri for a price said to be as high as $200 million. Some analysts wonder, though, whether SRI will be able to duplicate this kind of success. Variations on the virtual personal assistant concept have been around for a while. Two services, for example — Remember the Milk and Jott — are types of electronic crutches intended to help users
