The inside story of Microsoft's secret 'Project Natal'

Great article, except for the end:

"'Realistically, if you want a one-to- one conversation with an AI-driven character, that’s at least five years away,' Andreas says. 'But thinking about where that tech is going,' Burton adds, 'if it’s cloud-based, passing the Turing test becomes much easier. You just need a huge internet-like database, then work out how to data mine that.'"

Uh, yeah, easier said than done!

Solving global warming is easy: you just need a huge atmosphere filled with CO2, then work out how to remove that.

This is one of those (rare) pieces of technology where I think "How in the world they did that", where I (due to multiple, complex areas of science involved) cannot even imagine how it can be done and this article answers lots of my questions.

Favorite quote: "Incubation is a business of stupidity. If we don’t feel stupid, we’re not pushing ourselves hard enough."

Say what you will about Microsoft, but Project Natal is really, really stunning stuff, even if it only works half as well as claimed. I studied computer vision in grad school; this stuff is hard.

Hats off to you, Microsoft.