The idea seemed a bit odd at first, but the idea brings together ideas used in agent modeling, where you build a simulation that has agents interact with other agents (or people) and then use the results of the interactions to train a model of the world. Mincraft could be used to create such a sim-world. Though its perhaps not the best vehicle. Recall Facebook's assistant M, mentioned here previously, which I don't think was successful, which perhaps drives this idea.
Facebook is using Minecraft to build an AI assistant By Isobel Asher Hamilton
Facebook is hoping it can train an AI assistant to understand a broad range of human commands with a little help from one of the biggest games in the world — Minecraft. Paper here.
A group of Facebook researchers published a paper in July explaining why they think Minecraft is the perfect place for an AI to learn about human communication. The key lies in the fact that Minecraft is what's known as a "sandbox" game, where players can roam around with relatively free rein as to what they want to do or build, while also following a set of relatively simple rules.
The researchers also hope that the natural curiosity of Minecraft players will give the AI plenty of humans to practise with. "Since we work in a game environment, players may enjoy interacting with the assistants as they are developed, yielding a rich resource for human-in-the-loop research," the paper says. Minecraft has 91 million monthly active users, so the potential pool of humans who could help train the AI is pretty vast. ,,,, "
Showing posts with label Facebook M. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook M. Show all posts
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Saturday, March 10, 2018
AI Will Still Need Remote Human Help. Or Concierges?
Truly autonomous cars still some time away? Will they still need rooms full of operators somewhere to take over car operations remotely in some situations? That's what dozens of companies are preparing for. Humans stay in the loop for now. For legal reasons, and sometimes to protect the autonomous vehicles from other humans. ' ... The truth is that artificial intelligence is neither artificial nor intelligent. A.I. is made out of people .... '
In ComputerWorld: by Mike Elgan
" ... California just approved licenses for self-driving cars to in fact have no human driver behind the wheel, or no human in the vehicle at all (after dropping off a passenger, or for deliveries) with one caveat: The self-driving car companies must monitor and be able to take over driving remotely.
This rule matches other parts of the country where no-driver autonomous vehicles have been allowed. There’s no human in the car, or at least the driver’s seat, but remote monitoring and remote control make that possible, safe and legal. ... "
In ComputerWorld: by Mike Elgan
" ... California just approved licenses for self-driving cars to in fact have no human driver behind the wheel, or no human in the vehicle at all (after dropping off a passenger, or for deliveries) with one caveat: The self-driving car companies must monitor and be able to take over driving remotely.
This rule matches other parts of the country where no-driver autonomous vehicles have been allowed. There’s no human in the car, or at least the driver’s seat, but remote monitoring and remote control make that possible, safe and legal. ... "
The article further examines how humans may continue to stay in the loop for some time. Also mentions the Facebook M example, where humans were initially designed into the system, perhaps with the goal to remove humans later? Our own approach used a 'Concierge' model, where the AI only had to be good enough to detect and solve the easiest problems OR pass the problem off to the right expert human. While having also gathered enough data to make the human's effort easier.
Humans will be in many loops, somewhere, for some time.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Facebook Introducing Smart Speakers
Fastcompany Says Facebook will introduce multiple Smart Speakers Unclear if there will be any remnants of the Facebook M assistant, reportedly dropped recently. We would assume it will integrate the Facebook software.
The social media giant is reportedly getting into the ever-crowded smart speaker market, according to DigiTimes. The site says Facebook will launch two smart speakers in July. The smart speakers will reportedly each have a 15-inch touch screen with the code names Aloha and Fiona. .... "
The social media giant is reportedly getting into the ever-crowded smart speaker market, according to DigiTimes. The site says Facebook will launch two smart speakers in July. The smart speakers will reportedly each have a 15-inch touch screen with the code names Aloha and Fiona. .... "
Monday, February 12, 2018
Towards Crowd Sourcing Conversational Agents
Intriguing thought, not sure it actually is the same as what we did and called a 'Concierge' model, linking appropriately to other smart agents or people. More like Facebook's attempt to include humans within the now defunct Facebook M. Interesting experiment with the examples. Once again using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to crowd source. And again our own experience was that the careful setup is key.
Crowd Workers, AI Make Conversational Agents Smarter
Carnegie Mellon News, By Byron Spice
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed Evorus, a chatbot system that recruits crowd workers on demand from Amazon Mechanical Turk to answer questions from users, with the crowd workers voting on the best answer. Evorus also tracks the questions that have been asked and answered, and over time, it will begin to suggest these answers for subsequent questions.
The researchers also developed a process by which the artificial intelligence (AI) can help to approve a message with less crowd worker involvement. During a five-month deployment, Evorus worked with 80 users and 181 conversations, and its automated responses to questions were chosen 12 percent of the time, crowd voting was reduced by almost 14 percent, and the cost of crowd work for each reply to a user's message dropped by 33 percent. The researchers will present Evorus in April at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018) in Montreal, Canada. .... "
Crowd Workers, AI Make Conversational Agents Smarter
Carnegie Mellon News, By Byron Spice
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed Evorus, a chatbot system that recruits crowd workers on demand from Amazon Mechanical Turk to answer questions from users, with the crowd workers voting on the best answer. Evorus also tracks the questions that have been asked and answered, and over time, it will begin to suggest these answers for subsequent questions.
The researchers also developed a process by which the artificial intelligence (AI) can help to approve a message with less crowd worker involvement. During a five-month deployment, Evorus worked with 80 users and 181 conversations, and its automated responses to questions were chosen 12 percent of the time, crowd voting was reduced by almost 14 percent, and the cost of crowd work for each reply to a user's message dropped by 33 percent. The researchers will present Evorus in April at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018) in Montreal, Canada. .... "
Wednesday, January 10, 2018
Facebook Stops their M Assistant
Somewhat of a surprise. I liked the fact that they had create a 'concierge' model that included some human expertise. But indications are that too much of it was human driven and thus too expensive. As in our experiments, the concierge is
Facebook kills virtual assistant M in the BBC.
Facebook M, a text-based personal assistant launched in beta form in August 2015, is to be killed off.
The human-enhanced version of M was made available through a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to a few thousand people in California but was expected to be rolled out to more users.
The firm confirmed that the service would not be extended, describing it as an "experiment".
One analyst said the service had failed to live up to expectations.
A spokesperson for Facebook's Messenger service told the BBC that M was to be axed, saying: "We launched this project to learn what people needed and expected of an assistant, and we learned a lot.
"We're taking these useful insights to power other AI (artificial intelligence) projects at Facebook.
"We continue to be very pleased with the performance of M suggestions in Messenger, powered by our learnings from this experiment."
Human help
M was described as a Siri-like personal assistant that could be used to carry out functions such as booking restaurants and flights and sending gifts.
It relied on human help - some suggest as much as 70% of the work. .... "
Facebook kills virtual assistant M in the BBC.
Facebook M, a text-based personal assistant launched in beta form in August 2015, is to be killed off.
The human-enhanced version of M was made available through a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to a few thousand people in California but was expected to be rolled out to more users.
The firm confirmed that the service would not be extended, describing it as an "experiment".
One analyst said the service had failed to live up to expectations.
A spokesperson for Facebook's Messenger service told the BBC that M was to be axed, saying: "We launched this project to learn what people needed and expected of an assistant, and we learned a lot.
"We're taking these useful insights to power other AI (artificial intelligence) projects at Facebook.
"We continue to be very pleased with the performance of M suggestions in Messenger, powered by our learnings from this experiment."
Human help
M was described as a Siri-like personal assistant that could be used to carry out functions such as booking restaurants and flights and sending gifts.
It relied on human help - some suggest as much as 70% of the work. .... "
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
Wal-Mart to Adopt Facebook's Workplace Edition
Quite an interesting and unexpected coup. Is Facebook best for retail? Consider how their Facebook M chatbot capability might be used for marketing. Here at first this is internal use. This could be a huge thing. Search and image oriented. Need to take a look at it. See Workplace by Facebook.
Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise edition, snaps up Walmart as a customer by Ingrid Lunden in TechCrunch
Workplace — Facebook’s bid to take on the Slack, Microsoft and the rest of the players in the market of business chat and collaboration — is getting a big push today by way of a significant customer win. The company has signed on Walmart, the retailing giant and the world’s biggest employer with 2.2 million employees on its books.
Walmart is rolling out Workplace to the whole of its business in stages, starting with associates and teams at Sam’s Club and other parts of the operation.
The move speaks to how Walmart — which last year acquired Jet.com for $3 billion — continues to step up its tech game as it feels the pinch of competition from Amazon, an e-commerce giant that is very quickly moving into Walmart’s brick-and-mortar territory.
“We believe the right technology can empower our people. Walmart’s vision of the future is centered around people — by serving the communities people live in and the people who work at Walmart,” said Clay Johnson, Walmart’s CIO and EVP. “Workplace shares this mission, and together we’re building the next generation workforce.”
Some of the uses so far for Walmart include to share pictures with other stores of a particular product display; to broadcast news via the Live video stream; and to manage communications between different geographies using Facebook’s automatic translation features (Walmart has operations across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia). .... "
Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise edition, snaps up Walmart as a customer by Ingrid Lunden in TechCrunch
Workplace — Facebook’s bid to take on the Slack, Microsoft and the rest of the players in the market of business chat and collaboration — is getting a big push today by way of a significant customer win. The company has signed on Walmart, the retailing giant and the world’s biggest employer with 2.2 million employees on its books.
Walmart is rolling out Workplace to the whole of its business in stages, starting with associates and teams at Sam’s Club and other parts of the operation.
The move speaks to how Walmart — which last year acquired Jet.com for $3 billion — continues to step up its tech game as it feels the pinch of competition from Amazon, an e-commerce giant that is very quickly moving into Walmart’s brick-and-mortar territory.
“We believe the right technology can empower our people. Walmart’s vision of the future is centered around people — by serving the communities people live in and the people who work at Walmart,” said Clay Johnson, Walmart’s CIO and EVP. “Workplace shares this mission, and together we’re building the next generation workforce.”
Some of the uses so far for Walmart include to share pictures with other stores of a particular product display; to broadcast news via the Live video stream; and to manage communications between different geographies using Facebook’s automatic translation features (Walmart has operations across North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia). .... "
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Age of Digital Assistants
Not a bad view, but the longer term potential is greater than implied.
The Age of Digital Assistants – What and when to expect? By Shishir Kathurwar in CustomerThink
“ The better we get, the less time you spend talking to customer service. It’s a gain for companies, but it’s also a gain for personal life.”– Alex Lebrun, Facebook M’s teacher ... "
More on my ongoing look at and development of Virtual Assistants.
The Age of Digital Assistants – What and when to expect? By Shishir Kathurwar in CustomerThink
“ The better we get, the less time you spend talking to customer service. It’s a gain for companies, but it’s also a gain for personal life.”– Alex Lebrun, Facebook M’s teacher ... "
More on my ongoing look at and development of Virtual Assistants.
Wednesday, August 16, 2017
Facebook Messenger's M
Been asked to go back and look at some of the AI/Assistant components of Facebook M, just launched in the UK after some time in the US. Facebook's work in the AI and machine learning space continues to expand.
In particular look at their work on dialog research, covered in the tags below. Ultimately handling dialog intelligently will be key in assistance. The operationally multilingual approach is also rare.
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Messenger's M Assistant
Facebook's M assistant can now suggest video or voice calls By Christian de Looper in DigitalTrends.
Notice a little "M" logo near the textbox in Facebook Messenger? It's the social media network's artificially intelligent assistant that's meant to offer suggestions in your conversations -- similar to how Google Assistant can jump in to help in conversations via Allo. With the assistant officially rolled out across the U.S., it is now available in both English and Spanish to all Messenger users in the country.
M is now able to provide suggestions in Spanish -- like sending payments or sharing your location -- and the feature is gradually rolling out in Mexico for iOS and Android, Facebook told Digital Trends. If you'd like to receive M Suggestions in Spanish, you can change the preferred language to Spanish.
M itself is powered by Facebook-built AI, and so far works by popping up in your chats when it detects that it can help with something. For example, if you mention going somewhere, M can detect this and will offer up a quick way to book a ride with Uber or Lyft (you can set your preference) -- all without leaving the Messenger app.
Before diving into what Facebook's M can do, there are a few things to keep in mind. Most importantly, Facebook is still working on M and it's likely the assistant will evolve a lot over the next few months and years. It will also roll out globally at some point as Facebook says users across the globe will "start seeing a redesigned way to compose messages." If you want nothing to do with this AI revolution, or if you think M makes your conversations too cluttered, you can mute it by heading to Messenger's settings -- tap on the person icon on the top-right of Messenger's main page, then tap M settings and toggle Suggestions off. ... ."
My coverage of this and many other personal assistants.
In particular look at their work on dialog research, covered in the tags below. Ultimately handling dialog intelligently will be key in assistance. The operationally multilingual approach is also rare.
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Messenger's M Assistant
Facebook's M assistant can now suggest video or voice calls By Christian de Looper in DigitalTrends.
Notice a little "M" logo near the textbox in Facebook Messenger? It's the social media network's artificially intelligent assistant that's meant to offer suggestions in your conversations -- similar to how Google Assistant can jump in to help in conversations via Allo. With the assistant officially rolled out across the U.S., it is now available in both English and Spanish to all Messenger users in the country.
M is now able to provide suggestions in Spanish -- like sending payments or sharing your location -- and the feature is gradually rolling out in Mexico for iOS and Android, Facebook told Digital Trends. If you'd like to receive M Suggestions in Spanish, you can change the preferred language to Spanish.
M itself is powered by Facebook-built AI, and so far works by popping up in your chats when it detects that it can help with something. For example, if you mention going somewhere, M can detect this and will offer up a quick way to book a ride with Uber or Lyft (you can set your preference) -- all without leaving the Messenger app.
Before diving into what Facebook's M can do, there are a few things to keep in mind. Most importantly, Facebook is still working on M and it's likely the assistant will evolve a lot over the next few months and years. It will also roll out globally at some point as Facebook says users across the globe will "start seeing a redesigned way to compose messages." If you want nothing to do with this AI revolution, or if you think M makes your conversations too cluttered, you can mute it by heading to Messenger's settings -- tap on the person icon on the top-right of Messenger's main page, then tap M settings and toggle Suggestions off. ... ."
My coverage of this and many other personal assistants.
Thursday, May 18, 2017
Facebook Research Understanding Dialog
Pointing towards Facebooks interest in AI and chatbots. Dialog understanding is hard.
The long game towards understanding dialog
By: Alexandre Lebrun, Antoine Bordes, Leon Bottou, Marco Baroni
Building an effective dialog system
At Facebook AI Research (FAIR), understanding dialogue is an ambitious and long-term AI research goal.
A truly effective dialogue system will be an assistive technology that will likely include a chatbot-type of system being able to interact with people through natural language communication. This could help people better understand the world around them and communicate more effectively with others, effectively bridging communication gaps. Researching and developing these kinds of technologies will only become more important as the amount of digital content continues to grow.
The attempt to understand and interpret dialogue is not a new one. As far back as 20 years, there were several efforts to build a machine a person could talk to and teach how to have a conversation. These incorporated technology and engineering, but were single purposed with a very narrow focus, using pre-programmed scripted responses.
Thanks to progress in machine learning, particularly in the last few years, having AI agents being able to converse with people in natural language has become a more realistic endeavor that is garnering attention from both the research community and industry.
However, most of today’s dialogue systems continue to be scripted: their natural language understanding module may be based on machine learning, but what they execute or answer is in general dictated by if/then statements or rules engines. While they are improvement on what existed decades ago, it is in large part due to the large databases of content used to create and script their responses. .... "
Facebook Research.
The long game towards understanding dialog
By: Alexandre Lebrun, Antoine Bordes, Leon Bottou, Marco Baroni
Building an effective dialog system
At Facebook AI Research (FAIR), understanding dialogue is an ambitious and long-term AI research goal.
A truly effective dialogue system will be an assistive technology that will likely include a chatbot-type of system being able to interact with people through natural language communication. This could help people better understand the world around them and communicate more effectively with others, effectively bridging communication gaps. Researching and developing these kinds of technologies will only become more important as the amount of digital content continues to grow.
The attempt to understand and interpret dialogue is not a new one. As far back as 20 years, there were several efforts to build a machine a person could talk to and teach how to have a conversation. These incorporated technology and engineering, but were single purposed with a very narrow focus, using pre-programmed scripted responses.
Thanks to progress in machine learning, particularly in the last few years, having AI agents being able to converse with people in natural language has become a more realistic endeavor that is garnering attention from both the research community and industry.
However, most of today’s dialogue systems continue to be scripted: their natural language understanding module may be based on machine learning, but what they execute or answer is in general dictated by if/then statements or rules engines. While they are improvement on what existed decades ago, it is in large part due to the large databases of content used to create and script their responses. .... "
Facebook Research.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Facebook Platform for Dialog Research
Brought to my attention. Facebook is doing lots with dialog and hybrid interactions, so its a natural place for this kind of research. Essential for chatbots. Have yet to see their Facebook M. Note the use of Mechanical Turk for examples.
ParlAI: A new software platform for dialog research
Jason Weston Alexander Miller Will Feng
One of the long-term goals in AI is to develop intelligent chat bots that can converse with people in a natural way. Existing chat bots can sometimes complete specific independent tasks but have trouble understanding more than a single sentence or chaining subtasks together to complete a bigger task. More complex dialog, such as booking a restaurant or chatting about sports or news, requires the ability to understand multiple sentences and then reason about those sentences to supply the next part of the conversation. Since human dialog is so varied, chat bots must be skilled at many related tasks that all require different expertise but use the same input and output format. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to build software that unifies these tasks, as well as the agents that can learn from them.
Recognizing this need, the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) team has built a new, open source platform for training and testing dialog models across multiple tasks at once. ParlAI (pronounced “par-lay”) is a one-stop shop for dialog research, where researchers can submit new tasks and training algorithms to a single, shared repository. Integration with Mechanical Turk for data collection, training, and evaluation also allows bots in ParlAI to talk to humans. This works toward the goal of unifying existing dialog data sets with learning systems that contain real dialog between people and bots.
ParlAI complements existing FAIR text research efforts like FastText, our quick and efficient text classification tool, and CommAI, our framework for developing artificial general intelligence through increasingly complex tasks. .... "
Further: Facebook Research blog
ParlAI: A new software platform for dialog research
Jason Weston Alexander Miller Will Feng
One of the long-term goals in AI is to develop intelligent chat bots that can converse with people in a natural way. Existing chat bots can sometimes complete specific independent tasks but have trouble understanding more than a single sentence or chaining subtasks together to complete a bigger task. More complex dialog, such as booking a restaurant or chatting about sports or news, requires the ability to understand multiple sentences and then reason about those sentences to supply the next part of the conversation. Since human dialog is so varied, chat bots must be skilled at many related tasks that all require different expertise but use the same input and output format. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to build software that unifies these tasks, as well as the agents that can learn from them.
Recognizing this need, the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) team has built a new, open source platform for training and testing dialog models across multiple tasks at once. ParlAI (pronounced “par-lay”) is a one-stop shop for dialog research, where researchers can submit new tasks and training algorithms to a single, shared repository. Integration with Mechanical Turk for data collection, training, and evaluation also allows bots in ParlAI to talk to humans. This works toward the goal of unifying existing dialog data sets with learning systems that contain real dialog between people and bots.
ParlAI complements existing FAIR text research efforts like FastText, our quick and efficient text classification tool, and CommAI, our framework for developing artificial general intelligence through increasingly complex tasks. .... "
Further: Facebook Research blog
Sunday, May 07, 2017
Teaching Facebook's Machines to Think
Building behavior Models of individuals?
Meet the man who makes Facebook’s machines think
By Alex Kantrowitz
Nearly 3,000 miles away from Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, in an old, beige office building in downtown Manhattan, a group of company employees is working on projects that seem better suited for science fiction than social networking. The team, Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research — known internally as FAIR — is focused on a singular goal: to create computers with intelligence on par with humans.
While still far from its finish line, the group is making the sort of progress few believed possible at the turn of the decade. Its AI programs are drawing pictures almost indistinguishable from those by human artists and taking quizzes on subject matter culled from Wikipedia. They're playing advanced video games like Starcraft. Slowly, they're getting smarter. And someday, they could change Facebook from something that facilitates interaction between friends into something that could be your friend. ....
Meet the man who makes Facebook’s machines think
By Alex Kantrowitz
Nearly 3,000 miles away from Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters, in an old, beige office building in downtown Manhattan, a group of company employees is working on projects that seem better suited for science fiction than social networking. The team, Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research — known internally as FAIR — is focused on a singular goal: to create computers with intelligence on par with humans.
While still far from its finish line, the group is making the sort of progress few believed possible at the turn of the decade. Its AI programs are drawing pictures almost indistinguishable from those by human artists and taking quizzes on subject matter culled from Wikipedia. They're playing advanced video games like Starcraft. Slowly, they're getting smarter. And someday, they could change Facebook from something that facilitates interaction between friends into something that could be your friend. ....
Friday, April 14, 2017
Closer Look at Facebook M
Technology Review takes a close and an insightful look at the Facebook M assistant. Long awaited and in broad test. Though I am not a fan of Facebook in general. I like the idea that new assistants, and 'skills' written for them, will give us new understanding of the current limitations of delivering AI.
And as was revealed long ago, Facebook M integrates human help into the mix. Apparently seamlessly. That's not bad, since ultimately we will all be working with these assistants. Back to the word concierge.
I also think that an assistant can be very successful by just being reasonably focused on some value. And entertainment/music can be that value. Opening it up for later leverage in other areas. Its certainly not about just doing 'smart' tricks. Looking to get my hands on Facebook M.
Facebook’s Perfect, Impossible Chatbot
Facebook is quietly trying to develop the most useful virtual assistant ever, in a project that illustrates the current limitations of artificial intelligence. by Tom Simonite April 14, 2017
Amazon’s Alexa can summon an Uber and satisfy a four-year-old’s demand for fart noises. Siri can control your Internet-connected thermostat. Each serve millions of users each day. But a lucky group of around 10,000 people, mostly in California, know that Facebook’s assistant, named M, is the smartest of the bunch. .... "
My link index of all assistants examined.
And as was revealed long ago, Facebook M integrates human help into the mix. Apparently seamlessly. That's not bad, since ultimately we will all be working with these assistants. Back to the word concierge.
I also think that an assistant can be very successful by just being reasonably focused on some value. And entertainment/music can be that value. Opening it up for later leverage in other areas. Its certainly not about just doing 'smart' tricks. Looking to get my hands on Facebook M.
Facebook’s Perfect, Impossible Chatbot
Facebook is quietly trying to develop the most useful virtual assistant ever, in a project that illustrates the current limitations of artificial intelligence. by Tom Simonite April 14, 2017
Amazon’s Alexa can summon an Uber and satisfy a four-year-old’s demand for fart noises. Siri can control your Internet-connected thermostat. Each serve millions of users each day. But a lucky group of around 10,000 people, mostly in California, know that Facebook’s assistant, named M, is the smartest of the bunch. .... "
My link index of all assistants examined.
Friday, April 07, 2017
Facebook M Assistant
Has been some time since the Facebook assistant has been mentioned, but it reemerges as a capability providing suggestions. Trend continues among IT giants as a way to engage. No review here, awaiting a closer look. Notable that is cautiously entitled as 'Suggestions from M', as opposed to a chat or conversation with M.
Facebook's M assistant launches in U.S., will offer chat suggestions
A.I.-powered features can suggest users send money, share location, and more By Blair Hanley Frank
More than a year after introducing a virtual assistant in its Messenger app, Facebook is launching M to the masses. While it was originally conceived as a bot that users would chat with, M now only offers a set of suggestions that are supposed to help with the conversation being carried out.
For example, when users are chatting about getting together for dinner, M will suggest that they create a shared plan that will remind them of the engagement as it approaches. The assistant will give them suggested stickers to react to conversational turns, along with prompts to transfer money, share location, start a poll, or get a ride from Uber or Lyft. ... "
My List of Assistants and link to posts.
Facebook's M assistant launches in U.S., will offer chat suggestions
A.I.-powered features can suggest users send money, share location, and more By Blair Hanley Frank
More than a year after introducing a virtual assistant in its Messenger app, Facebook is launching M to the masses. While it was originally conceived as a bot that users would chat with, M now only offers a set of suggestions that are supposed to help with the conversation being carried out.
For example, when users are chatting about getting together for dinner, M will suggest that they create a shared plan that will remind them of the engagement as it approaches. The assistant will give them suggested stickers to react to conversational turns, along with prompts to transfer money, share location, start a poll, or get a ride from Uber or Lyft. ... "
My List of Assistants and link to posts.
Saturday, March 11, 2017
Examining Facebook Messenger Bots
Had a number of times mentioned our experiments with chatbots here. Illuminating approaches, but too early. In a recent conversation I was told I really needed to look at the offering through Facebook Messenger. Although a user have always felt nervous about using FB. But now I am off on an exploration. What will the basic underlying architecture of conversational knowledge exchanges be? First was this article in SiliconAngle:
Is FB Messenger AI bot the best social strategy for businesses and others?
By R Danes ....
Is FB Messenger AI bot the best social strategy for businesses and others?
By R Danes ....
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Zuckerberg's Jarvis Assistant
Zuckerberg's voice butler Jarvis. Yet another take on smart home voice assistants. No indication this may be made publicly available. Just starting to examine and will post on this. Where are the previous attempts like Facebook M?. (This will be updated)
http://www.zdnet.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-shares-insights-gained-from-building-his-ai-butler-jarvis/
https://www.fastcompany.com/3066478/mind-and-machine/mark-zuckerberg-jarvis
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/mark-zuckerberg-builds-artificial-intelligence/2016/12/19/id/764733/
http://www.zdnet.com/article/mark-zuckerberg-shares-insights-gained-from-building-his-ai-butler-jarvis/
https://www.fastcompany.com/3066478/mind-and-machine/mark-zuckerberg-jarvis
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/mark-zuckerberg-builds-artificial-intelligence/2016/12/19/id/764733/
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Facebook's AI Chatbots Now Serve a Billion Users
Its claimed that Facebook Messenger now has a billion users, and those billion users can be served by a swarm of AI chatbots, Will those billion users be served well enough, to some sort of useful and profitable end, so that the users of Messenger will take the Bot's advice? Or will they leave for the exits? Further Discussed in CWorld. The AI will have to be good and very adaptive to the users. How much will this handle a conversation rather than just a tailored ad or notification?
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Testing Facebook Chatbots
Certainly Facebook has the largest and most varied domain to test the idea. How 'AI strong' can a chatbot be? Does it need to be? Companies testing: In CWorld: " .... When The Muppets Studio wanted Miss Piggy to be able to chat with her fans, executives there decided to connect her with a new Facebook Messenger chatbot. ...
"We were very interested in creating an opportunity for Miss Piggy to connect with her fans in a very personal way," said Debbie McClellan, vice president of The Muppets Studio. "Messaging is a natural way for people (and internationally famous pigs) to communicate. Chatbots made it possible for Miss Piggy to engage in one-on-one conversations and to develop a deeper relationship with her fans.".... '
"We were very interested in creating an opportunity for Miss Piggy to connect with her fans in a very personal way," said Debbie McClellan, vice president of The Muppets Studio. "Messaging is a natural way for people (and internationally famous pigs) to communicate. Chatbots made it possible for Miss Piggy to engage in one-on-one conversations and to develop a deeper relationship with her fans.".... '
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Google Planning Chatbots in Messengers Leveraging Cognitive AI
I recently mentioned the linking of chatbots and messenger systems. Recall we addressed this in early assistance systems. See the Mr Clean tag below.In Forbes: Google To Launch An Artificial Intelligence Messenger Service To Rival Facebook M .... Theo Priestley
" .... According to sources close to the Wall Street Journal, Google is looking into launching a new mobile based messenger service underpinned by artificial intelligence. “For its new service, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., plans to integrate chatbots, software programs that answer questions inside a messaging app,” the article claims. ... "
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Chatbots are Back for Services
Google working on a chatbot filled messaging service. We experimented with chatbots. And I see that the 'Slack' messaging service claims one as well. It is a natural place to place a service that interprets interactions and attempts to provide value. NLP based AI has improved considerably, so it is useful to think of their inclusion in service channels. An example of an attentive system. Also an example of a 'UI Free' system. More to follow here. Also consider their similarity to Facebook M, where messages can be passed to humans, or chatbot agents.
Thursday, October 01, 2015
Facebook and AI, Learning in Assistants
In the BBC:
" ... Prof Yann LeCun is a hugely influential force in the field of Deep Learning and is now director of AI research at Facebook ...
" .... What we are hoping to do is take this digital assistant idea to the next level. If you think about Siri, Cortana, Google Now - most of the answers they provide are scripted. Someone has imagined the possible answers and figured out a tree of possibilities. If you go outside of the script, the machines responds with a joke or tries to get out of it. All of its behaviour is programmed by humans but what we are trying to do with M is test the ability of a machine to learn. It is very ambitious, very risky and just a small experiment for the moment but we will see how it goes over the next year or two. We are very excited about it because it is really the essence of AI - a machine that you can talk to and that can help you. .... "
" ... Prof Yann LeCun is a hugely influential force in the field of Deep Learning and is now director of AI research at Facebook ...
" .... What we are hoping to do is take this digital assistant idea to the next level. If you think about Siri, Cortana, Google Now - most of the answers they provide are scripted. Someone has imagined the possible answers and figured out a tree of possibilities. If you go outside of the script, the machines responds with a joke or tries to get out of it. All of its behaviour is programmed by humans but what we are trying to do with M is test the ability of a machine to learn. It is very ambitious, very risky and just a small experiment for the moment but we will see how it goes over the next year or two. We are very excited about it because it is really the essence of AI - a machine that you can talk to and that can help you. .... "
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