The popularity of Babak Pahlavan‘s new predictive, artificial intelligence app seems to have caught him completely by surprise; so much so that he had to change its (or maybe in this case, his) name from Seymour to Alfred.
The latest MacBooks (including the Pro and the new Airs) have been understandably criticized for their anachronistic adherence to Intel’s last-gen Core 2 Duo CPU when competing notebooks have all moved on to the superior Arrandale architecture.
There’s a good reason for that, though: a lawsuit between Intel and GPU maker NVIDIA that prevents the latter company from making chipsets for current-gen Intel CPUs that include an NVIDIA memory controller. That lawsuit may be on the cusp of being resolved.
French software development company Visuamobile is planning to launch an iPhone app called ELIZA AI, based on the 1966 artificial intelligence computer program trained to respond to questions like a therapist, that is by asking other questions.
Though the program is dated, Leca says the Eliza iPhone app still had the same effect that surprised creator Joseph Weizenbaum back at MIT in the day — at a certain point people forget ELIZA is not a human therapist.
“What seemed really interesting, and I have tested it at the office, is that people are reluctant to show you what they have been discussing with Eliza,” Dominique Leca of Visuamobile told Cult of Mac. Leca, who handles business development at the Paris-based company, had the idea for the app. “And, to tell you the truth, Eliza has helped me several times. The fact that she constantly asks you to explain yourself is a great way to analyze what you think.”
Set to be released for free download on the visuamobile store on iTunes March 3, Leca said the Eliza app will likely remain gratis but the company has more sophisticated psyched-up apps in the works, like one based on AI chat robot ALICE, that will probably be fee-based.
Assisted navel-gazing anyone?
Images courtesy visuamobile