Large language models (LLMs) are wonderful tools, but they sometimes make important mistakes. This informal note shows a stream of incorrect responses from Perplexity (a generally great resource) when we asked it about a rental property. Despite a series of … Continue reading →
AI technology is powerful but imperfect. Its complexity and imperfections have led to rapidly developing AI engineering (AIE) practices for building AI applications. This paper explains current AI technology and AI Engineering in terms of sensemaking, reasoning, and explainability. State-of-the-art … Continue reading →
A widespread public concern is that AIs are not trustworthy because they lack human values. Current practices for governing AI behavior aim to contain and guide AI behavior using software guardrails. In contrast, humans have nuanced, context dependent, and deep … Continue reading →
The vision of AIs as human-like collaborators is a staple of mythology and science fiction, where artificial agents with special talents assist human partners and teams. In this vision, sophisticated AIs understand nuances of collaboration and human communication. The AI … Continue reading →
Today’s robots do not learn the general skills needed for such services as providing home care, being nursing assistants, or doing household chores. Addressing such aspirational goals requires improving how AIs and robots are created. Today’s mainstream AIs are not … Continue reading →
Developmental AI creates embodied AIs that develop human-like abilities. In a bootstrapping approach to developmental AI, the AIs start with innate competences and learn more by interacting with the world including people. Developmental AIs have been demonstrated, but their abilities … Continue reading →
When I was asked to lead the Intelligent Systems and Technology Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), I wanted the lab to succeed wonderfully in its research mission. I was a fairly prolific inventor and had taken multiple … Continue reading →
Human-computer teams combine best of human and computer cognition. The combination can lead to extremely high performance. But are human-computer teams the future of work? For some of us, the idea of having computers on the team is outside of … Continue reading →
The typical news today about LED bulbs is about their rapid adoption, their dropping prices, and supporting legislation. The bigger story is about exploiting the IOT (Internet of Things) infrastructure that surrounds them. Lightbulbs have great established infrastructure. Each receptacle is wired for power. Bulbs have standard screw bases … Continue reading →
In Edinburgh they call them “closes”. Other names include arcades, lanes, and alleys. For urban designer Christopher Alexander, an alley is kind of pedestrian street (design pattern #100). A shopping alley is an alley with store fronts. It is often an integral part of a shopping … Continue reading →
