[dsr_]

The IA advance which is most obvious to me (yet somehow not yet a reality) is the nomenclator.

In Rome, a nomenclator was a slave who remembered people's names for you, and as they approached would whisper to you that this is Gaius Tullius Castor, his wife is Flaminia, his eldest boy is Marcus, and he owns beanfields.

A Google Glass camera on your eyeglasses and a speaker in your ear, hooked up to Facebook's face recognition and social web, can tell you a quick precis of who you see across the room before they get to you. Add a touch sensor in your pocket or on a ring for unobtrusive control, and a mic to pick up your annotations or commands, and you've got a product that should be a major hit by the second generation.

[lnanek2]

Google famously banned face recognition on Glass after I and some other developers made demo apps and APIs for using it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1aeMJY1AO0

Even now that Glass has been canceled for all but commercial use, it's still in the guidelines that you aren't allowed to use face recognition: > https://developers.google.com/glass/policies?hl=en " Don't use the camera or microphone to cross-reference and immediately present personal information identifying anyone other than the user, including use cases such as facial recognition and voice print. Glassware that do this will not be approved at this time. "

Amusingly, my nursing notes demo was me trying to be politically correct. People were more interested in things like cross referencing most wanted lists and sexual offender lists.

[protomyth]

That ban made me uninterested in Glass. Face recognition would have been such a help to elderly folks. Add object recognition and GPS and you could have had an assistant to help the elderly through their day.

[nickpsecurity]

I can't see why. The tech just needs to be designed to handle malicious input a bit better and isolate certain aspects on a per-user basis. That people could pollute the recognition system's data set should've been assumed. Especially if marketing to the Internet crowd. ;)

[nickpsecurity]

The nomenclator is an interesting example. Far as Glass, I agree use cases like that. protomyth's had a lot of potential, too. The effect my brain injury had on memory, long-term and short-term, means I'd probably benefit. Quite an advance from the "cyborgs" wearing primitive stuff that just let them take notes and look ridiculsou at the same time.

[hellbanner]

I highly recommend Things that Make Us Smart: http://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Smart-Attributes/dp/0... "Defending Human attributes int he age of the Machine".

Great read for anyone interested in IA or AI.