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Comment by agentultra | Hacker News Reader

Is the AI winter really over?

Or is Siri simply the practical application of machine learning and NLP which we've manage to derive from off-shoots of AI research?

I think it will be some time yet when I can make a natural language query and have an AI agent fetch relevant data, sort it, and present it contextually. Or sketch an idea for a building and have an AI do all the hard work of creating the blueprints.

In the near future though it's obvious that we'll see more practical applications of AI in every-day products and I think that's pretty neat.

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>>> a natural language query and have an AI agent fetch relevant data, sort it, and present it contextually.

What about IBM's watson : you asks it a question: am i sick? it gathers symptoms from you , looks in the medical literature and concludes your possible illnesses and in what likelihood.

I think it can also refer you to the relevant literature.

>>> Or sketch an idea for a building and have an AI do all the hard work of creating the blueprints.

bluethink house designer[1] does that.You enter a very high level drawing , and it fills in all the details according to regulations, cost efficency and best practices.

[1]http://www.aecbytes.com/buildingthefuture/2009/BluethinkHous...

I think it is. I view Siri as Apple II of personal computers. Siri crosses the threshold and I believe the race is on.

I won't judge siri, as I do not know the details of technology or the machine learning algorithms used by it, but I would say this much: your one line pitch might just impress some businessweek readers but I don't think a really cool technology needs punchlines like that (..apple II..) - your article sounds like its coming from a non-technical observer for a non-technical audience - and that would be okay if the product had passed the stage of hype into early stages of common usage.

At this stage though I am more interested in how is it different from 100s of other AI applications that failed to take over the world or become the next big thing.

My need to criticize primarily came from your last paragraph where you are appealing to developers to jump in without realizing that that segment of your audience looks not very respectfully at phrases like 'buckle up' and 'amazing ride'

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