Next: KIP - How Up: No Title Previous: No Title

The Knowbotic Interface Project - KIP

The Knowbotic Interface Project [KIP] of the Institute for New Media [INM] is a somehow unconventional approach to improve the communication between humans and artificial intelligence realized as autonomous learning agents, called knowbots.

The interface between humans and knowbots is transferred into the machine. The `real' encounter between a human and a knowbot happens within a virtual world which is the `real' environment for both. In this virtual world, humans and knowbots have the same perceptual conditions and the same repertoire of possible actions. The virtual world can be a building, a factory, an airport, a whole landscape, principally everything what you want to be a possible content of the intended communication-process between humans and knowbots.

Every object in the virtual world has a sensorical cover, i.e. it contains information related to every sens organ like seeing, hearing, smelling, touching and tasting. Thus, having the right interface, a user could perceive the virtual objects in his `real' world having sense qualities `as usual'.

To enable the knowbots to use natural language during communication like humans do, a framework has to be provided in the knowbots, allowing the simulation of a humanlike consciousness. KIP assumes at least two main learning processes inside of knowbot: (i) learning of the world without using a language and (ii) learning some natural language related to a learned world. Logically (i) is prior to (ii) and independent of (ii); practically happens (ii) very early and proceeds in parallel to (i). Knowbots will learn the language which they encounter in their environment. If no humans speak with them, they will create their own language.

Because the virtual world interface between humans and knowbots can easily be expanded by lots of additional communication lines and several `real-world-sensors' one can extend the virtual world activities nearly unlimited into the `real world': the `virtual' will become increasingly `real' by absorbing the connected `reality'. Is the reverse also true?

The KIP can have very strong implications for social and economic structures as well as for the philosophical understanding of what humans are like.

Next: KIP - How Up: No Title Previous: No Title