Where do you go in terms of bringing the concept of conversational Web site avatars into more regular, everyday use?
We’re investigating options for Web-based speech recognition. This will take time, but eventually you will be able to speak to her and get good quality back. It’ll probably take six to 12 months. We are doing constant work on updating her knowledge base, but she also has a lot of general knowledge from conversation. Of course, she doesn’t yet pass the Turing test. (The Turing test was developed by computer scientist Alan Turing to determine whether computers can “think.”) Take the 30,000-foot view. What do you envision as the predominant benefit society will derive from virtual reality? There are several ways to approach this. I think avatars will be a near-term trend over the next several years. We’ll see them as a very useful human interface. They’re entertaining but also a good way to interact with machines. For example? Well, I don’t like when forms pop up (on a Web page). It’s a struggle. I would rather say what I want them to do. We’ll interact with virtual personalities, virtual
