Collaborative, spoken-language interface agents

Abstract

First, the day of the GUI is drawing to a close. Second, many visionaries have argued that the new user interface will be a direct and delegate interface. But that's wrong. The coming interface is one in which the user collaborates with the computer. The computer understands what the user is doing, can take part in those activities and is able to respond conversationally to the user's activities. This requires an interface that not only understands the user's individual utterances but also can participate in a conversation. Because conversations are fundamentally about the purposes for which people participate in the conversation, this new interface will also require that the machine understand and model purposes behind conversation. During this talk we will demonstrate new interfaces, some with speech, that participate with users in collaborations about doing email. We will use these demonstrations to illustrate how conversation and tasks can play a role in user interfaces. We will also demonstrate instances where spoken conversational interaction is more efficient than GUI interaction.