Social Artificial Intelligence

Wednesday in the Bay Area was sunny and interesting visits continued. In the morning, I bicycled from the hotel to the Semlab, the Computational Semantics Laboratory at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University.

Dr. Elizabeth Owen Bratt was hosting the visit and had organized a number of interesting demos shown by her colleagues. The interesting demos included dialogue systems being developed in the lab as well as a system that analyzes meeting transcripts.

I had also a chance to discuss with Prof. Keith Devlin who is the director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information. Devlin was telling about the increasing connections between Finnish researchers and Stanford University.

In the afternoon, we visited the newly opened Nokia Research Center Palo Alto. The visit was hosted by Dr. Joe McCarthy (check Joe's blog). I gave a presentation on "Social Artificial Intelligence" expressing that not only are the needs and priorities different among people but also their knowledge and language are unique. One cannot assume that expressions would mean the same for all those who receive the message. Social AI technologies are needed to model those differences. The presentatation was followed by a lively discussion.

Joe McCarthy, Timo Honkela and Sari Stenfors at
Nokia Research Center Palo Alto.