tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48250533975948314492024-03-12T16:58:54.078-07:00Virtual HumansThis website and blog support the Virtual Humans book by David Burden and Maggi Savin-Baden published by Taylor & Francis in February 2019. Here you can find links to images, videos, papers, articles and application resources related to the topics covered by the book, and a blog maintained by the authors to track the development of this fascinating and vitally important topic.David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-75430044321568900372022-06-24T00:17:00.005-07:002022-06-24T00:17:52.014-07:00Washington Post - Alexa has a new voice — your dead relative’s<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/alexa-amazon-voice-dead-people/" target="_blank"> https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/23/alexa-amazon-voice-dead-people/</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-31041595681726389312022-03-23T07:28:00.004-07:002022-03-23T07:28:55.303-07:00New Unity Real-Time Avatar Technology<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eXYUNrgqWUU" width="320" youtube-src-id="eXYUNrgqWUU"></iframe></div><br /><p>New real-time character rendering demo from Unity - <a href="https://unity.com/demos/enemies">https://unity.com/demos/enemies</a></p><p><a href="https://www.gamedeveloper.com/gdc2022/unity-provides-glimpse-of-super-realistic-digital-humans-with-enemies-demo">https://www.gamedeveloper.com/gdc2022/unity-provides-glimpse-of-super-realistic-digital-humans-with-enemies-demo</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-59013214693148324282021-12-13T03:58:00.004-08:002021-12-13T03:58:30.516-08:00Current Avatar Tech Roundup<p>Quite a nice roundup of current avatar tech.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://medium.com/metaverses/digital-humans-the-amazon-echos-of-the-metaverse-5763a2dd50b6">https://medium.com/metaverses/digital-humans-the-amazon-echos-of-the-metaverse-5763a2dd50b6</a></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-25293534075584213882021-12-08T13:21:00.004-08:002021-12-08T13:21:24.773-08:00Baby X<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="362" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PHQhCiVLRpE" width="435" youtube-src-id="PHQhCiVLRpE"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>One thing I did spot in iHuman was the Baby X work, which apparently was the initial testbed for the Soul Machines technology. Looked a bit more convincing than the old Milo demo.</p><p><a href="https://www.soulmachines.com/resources/research/baby-x/">https://www.soulmachines.com/resources/research/baby-x/</a></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-63756404580157619912021-12-08T13:18:00.002-08:002021-12-08T13:18:50.151-08:00iHuman<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="342" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7foMHzpT-f4" width="411" youtube-src-id="7foMHzpT-f4"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><p>Finally got around to watching iHuman. Feel like watching again to plot on my AI Landscape model all the different ways it uses "AI". It also conflates AGI with Superhuman AI, and the idea that AGI will be able to replace almost all human workers despite a) it noting that it might take the energy of a small city to power one and b) lots of jobs need physical skills which we haven't cracked for robots yet. It doesn't stay into "sentient AI" at all, and a good 50% of it is about "basic" neural net style pattern recognition for marketing/intelligence/surveillance/military purposes. Nice visuals though.</p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-21714965295628490642021-10-29T06:44:00.005-07:002021-10-29T06:44:59.795-07:00Meta's Metaverse<p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgKrKYkkmrq5VGe2yMDW9YcCDJfn0YcksUdXJSFxcwawcNwzm025ICo9REhJPuA73WIX2GDDm-QC-lkcXhHrZIa3A0E06SCKYYpZoUiMbbpQIsi1hywkFWXbKuVkWk5YQMKgxPzo9dBnhp1snb7QGRZYnfkWJuSiYOa-YLmojZYSdQhyN83IWZ5pOp=s1024" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhgKrKYkkmrq5VGe2yMDW9YcCDJfn0YcksUdXJSFxcwawcNwzm025ICo9REhJPuA73WIX2GDDm-QC-lkcXhHrZIa3A0E06SCKYYpZoUiMbbpQIsi1hywkFWXbKuVkWk5YQMKgxPzo9dBnhp1snb7QGRZYnfkWJuSiYOa-YLmojZYSdQhyN83IWZ5pOp=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">At Connect 21 in Horizon Venues</td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>Watched Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse presentation in Horizon Venues last night. The avatar designer has been upgraded but otherwise no changes that I could see. Still couldn't photograph the screen!</p><p>My full write-up is at <a href="https://dadenblog.blogspot.com/2021/10/facebook-aka-meta-connect2021.html">https://dadenblog.blogspot.com/2021/10/facebook-aka-meta-connect2021.html</a> but the Virtual Human highlights seemed to be:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Yep, pretty much everything talked about in terms of what you could do in the VW element of the Metaverse you could do in SL 15 years ago</li><li>He talked about interoperability in terms of being able to bring avatars and virtual objects between worlds - but it wasn't clear if this was between FB/Meta ecosphere applications only, or out to third party virtual worlds. I fear the former. At the ReLive conference in 2011 we highlighted interoperability as the key medium term need - and we're still not there!</li><li>There seemed to be a lot of emphasis on "holograms" and going to real concerts/meetings as holograms with real friends/colleagues. It was at all clear on how that was ever going to work, although the AR glasses would sort of make that feasible. Mind you having tried to stream a bit of video out of a concert recently I can't see how the bandwidth will ever be there! Oh, virtual after parties - tick, done that, great one after The Wall show in SL "back in the day" actually on the stage set.</li><li>The Codec photo-realistic avatars looked quite good - volumetric and based on face/body scans, but with the ability to then change hair, clothes etc. The clothing demo and talk about hair modelling reminded me of how much we wrote about those areas in our Virtual Humans book.</li></ul><p></p><p>Not a lot of talk about autonomous avatars to populate the places - guess they'll be too full of Facebook users!</p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-50969297665282392052021-09-14T06:58:00.001-07:002021-09-14T06:58:05.230-07:00Vergecast: Everyone will be able to clone their voice in the future<p>More on DeepFake approaches to voice synthesis</p><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/22672123/ai-voice-clone-synthesis-deepfake-applications-vergecast" target="_blank">https://www.theverge.com/22672123/ai-voice-clone-synthesis-deepfake-applications-vergecast</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-37956996878508181122021-08-05T02:57:00.007-07:002021-08-05T02:58:21.922-07:00Agents United<p> <a href="https://www.agents-united.org/">https://www.agents-united.org/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Academic multi-agent conversational research platform</p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-70478532121867228132021-07-08T02:32:00.002-07:002021-07-08T02:32:11.721-07:00RAF's Stories from the Future - Digital Immortality and Virtual Personas<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rcYE2U0uVzM/YObF_ns9FBI/AAAAAAAAYZk/VdNV_ebYEWMTT7MLS1O2VZSwu0S52n_DwCLcBGAsYHQ/s285/RAF%2BHeads%2BTogether.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="198" data-original-width="285" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rcYE2U0uVzM/YObF_ns9FBI/AAAAAAAAYZk/VdNV_ebYEWMTT7MLS1O2VZSwu0S52n_DwCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/RAF%2BHeads%2BTogether.PNG" /></a></div><br /><p>The Royal Air Force has just released a second edition of their "Stories from the Future" - fiction pieces designed to get people thinking about the future of the Services and Air Defence.</p><p>One of the stories, "Heads Together" draws on some of the work we've done for MOD around the concept of virtual personas:</p><p><i>"Diverse viewpoints make for better decisions, so imagine a world where the whole of society engages with Defence through some form of service and the friends that you make there can convene virtually when you need to discuss a problem, whether they now work in Defence, in industry, in academia – or at all. In this tale, we look at how our people might benefit from this in the future"</i></p><p>The question that the story explicitly poses at the end is:</p><p><i>How would you feel about bring perpetuated in virtual form after you had changed jobs, left Defence or even died? Would advice from your virtual self be a liability to your real self?</i></p><p>You can read this, and the other stories at <a href="https://www.raf.mod.uk/documents/pdf/stories-from-the-future-second-edition/">https://www.raf.mod.uk/documents/pdf/stories-from-the-future-second-edition/</a></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-17197670349290289792021-07-07T04:54:00.004-07:002021-07-07T04:54:17.395-07:00AI HR Manager Interview - Artistic "Experience"<p><a href="http://theinterview.ai/">http://theinterview.ai/</a></p><p><br /></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-22014001079701375982021-07-07T03:37:00.002-07:002021-07-07T03:37:19.649-07:00AI Generated Tongues<p><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2282994-ai-generated-tongue-could-make-game-characters-look-more-realistic/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1625651656" target="_blank"> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2282994-ai-generated-tongue-could-make-game-characters-look-more-realistic/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1625651656</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-74594919309255817642021-06-23T05:00:00.000-07:002021-06-23T05:00:05.452-07:00Hua Zhibing, China's first virtual student - using Wudao 2.<p><br /></p><p> <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/06/c_139992397.htm">http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/06/c_139992397.htm</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-88139571326169969722021-06-09T01:45:00.001-07:002021-06-09T01:45:11.059-07:00Google LaMBDA Chatbot<p><a href="https://towardsdatascience.com/googles-lamda-the-next-generation-of-chatbots-62294be58426" target="_blank"> https://towardsdatascience.com/googles-lamda-the-next-generation-of-chatbots-62294be58426</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-61085495764448335372021-02-10T08:28:00.003-08:002021-02-10T08:28:37.615-08:00Epics' MetaHumans - good looking avatars<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6mAF5dWZXcI" width="320" youtube-src-id="6mAF5dWZXcI"></iframe></div><p><br /></p><p>Read more at:</p><p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/10/22276265/epic-games-digital-human-creator-unreal-engine-realistic-human-faces">https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/10/22276265/epic-games-digital-human-creator-unreal-engine-realistic-human-faces</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-34966698847459970372021-01-27T03:56:00.002-08:002021-01-27T03:56:26.411-08:00Keeping an AI on astronauts’ emotions<p> Nice article on emotion detection using ML and an Ekman type emotional model.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://bits-chips.nl/artikel/keeping-an-ai-on-astronauts-emotions/">https://bits-chips.nl/artikel/keeping-an-ai-on-astronauts-emotions/</a></p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-30781323108090563442020-11-11T08:59:00.001-08:002020-11-11T08:59:12.745-08:00Virtual Humans - now out in Paperback!<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flKL6taBdFQ/XEhy4UpqKoI/AAAAAAAANIo/qtga1XtNBPAOPyD2QfI3_0dwksbnT4WKgCPcBGAYYCw/s393/VH%2BBook%2BCover%2BFront%2Bv2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="260" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-flKL6taBdFQ/XEhy4UpqKoI/AAAAAAAANIo/qtga1XtNBPAOPyD2QfI3_0dwksbnT4WKgCPcBGAYYCw/s320/VH%2BBook%2BCover%2BFront%2Bv2.PNG" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Our Virtual Humans book is now out in paperback! Get it from <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0367656620/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_KzbRFb2E26NR5" target="_blank">Amazon</a> and all good bookshops - COVID willing!</p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-5766868435190983552020-10-26T09:54:00.002-07:002020-10-26T09:54:23.187-07:00Sophia2020<p> Looks like Hanson Robotics are releasing a new version of Sophia for "for research, academic and B2B applications".</p><p>Teaser video here</p><p><a href="https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia-2020/">https://www.hansonrobotics.com/sophia-2020/</a></p><p>Frightening on so many levels :-)</p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-35272269357334634932020-10-19T04:28:00.004-07:002020-10-19T04:28:15.669-07:00AI Tech North Presentation<p>David's talk at AI Tech North on "Enriching Virtual Humans through the Semantic Web and Knowledge Graphs" is now available on video:</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QdhHfbyIB14" width="320" youtube-src-id="QdhHfbyIB14"></iframe></div><br /><p>It's a 20min watch, and followed by another interesting session on analysis of language in social media use.</p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-3403400544879677952020-09-28T06:28:00.004-07:002020-09-28T06:28:33.927-07:00Virtual Humans - Thinkpiece Video<p>Earlier during lockdown I recorded a short talk on virtual humans inspired by the Virtual Humans book for our publishers.</p><p>Taylor and Francis have now posted the talk on their web site in their AI Knowledge Hub strand. You can view it at <a href="https://aibusiness.com/video.asp?section_id=803&doc_id=763252">https://aibusiness.com/video.asp?section_id=803&doc_id=763252</a> or below:</p><p><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" src="//players.brightcove.net/3565746760001/By4Hoz2VW_default/index.html?videoId=6181838887001"></iframe></p><div><br /></div><div>My co-author, Prof Maggi Savin-Baden has a similar piece on Digital Afterlife at <a href="https://aibusiness.com/video.asp?section_id=803&doc_id=764214">https://aibusiness.com/video.asp?section_id=803&doc_id=764214</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Enjoy, and be interested to hear your thoughts.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-76377279256288662422020-09-07T06:53:00.012-07:002020-09-28T06:04:31.461-07:00Aura Blogpost - "From Virtual Personas to a Digital Afterlife"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t7Q21-1S1Jk/X3HfSMrRzLI/AAAAAAAAUhg/JKN0rZlWBiwVweM4ROczOA-DdXHB9E85wCLcBGAsYHQ/s875/Aura-Digital-Afterlife.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="875" height="188" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-t7Q21-1S1Jk/X3HfSMrRzLI/AAAAAAAAUhg/JKN0rZlWBiwVweM4ROczOA-DdXHB9E85wCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h188/Aura-Digital-Afterlife.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>David has a blog post on "From Virtual Personas to a Digital Afterlife" on the blog of the new Aura website/service- "designed to help you prepare your memories, important information and connect with loved ones before you die", part of the burgeoning digital afterlife/memorial sector but also looking to open up the conversations ahead of time.</p><p>You can read the blog post in full at: <a href="https://www.aura.page/articles/from-virtual-personas-to-a-digital-afterlife/">https://www.aura.page/articles/from-virtual-personas-to-a-digital-afterlife/</a></p><p>It's also interesting to compare some of the ideas in the post with Channel 4's recent documentary on <a href="https://www.channel4.com/programmes/peter-the-human-cyborg" target="_blank">Peter: The Human Cyborg</a> as there certainly seems to be some common ground worth exploring.</p>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-4234215221556602982020-07-10T08:59:00.001-07:002020-07-10T08:59:13.648-07:00Making of The Heretic: Digital Human tech package for Unity Demo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogs.unity3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/image11.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="800" height="186" src="https://blogs.unity3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/image11.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Nice article on the Unity blog about creating a realistic human avatar.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/07/10/making-of-the-heretic-digital-human-tech-package/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=engine_global_generalpromo_2020-07-09_heretic-blog&utm_content=link-preview">https://blogs.unity3d.com/2020/07/10/making-of-the-heretic-digital-human-tech-package/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=engine_global_generalpromo_2020-07-09_heretic-blog&utm_content=link-preview</a><br />
<br />
<br />David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-44454309456707612752020-04-07T00:55:00.000-07:002020-04-07T00:55:34.610-07:00Personal Digital Twins role in Epidemics controlApart from some sobering thoughts about Digital Immortality I didn't think I'd see much linking Virtual Humans to COVID-19 but this is an interesting post around the concept of Personal Digital Twins (CDT). As I understand it the idea is that if your digital twin is put into the agent based model of the disease then a) you get a more personal sense as to whether the virus might get you, and so modify your behaviour accordingly (although the reverse may be a danger), b) the model is more accurate if your PDT is an accurate model of you rather than a generic agent and c) by combining the model action/results and your real world action/results the model can be improved.<br />
<br />
Read more at: <a href="https://cmte.ieee.org/futuredirections/2020/04/07/personal-digital-twins-role-in-epidemics-control-xi/">https://cmte.ieee.org/futuredirections/2020/04/07/personal-digital-twins-role-in-epidemics-control-xi/</a>David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-24637146420334251182020-04-07T00:49:00.000-07:002020-04-07T00:49:24.450-07:00Digital Afterlife book is out!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YLcjX9A5b0I/Xowu7SznRqI/AAAAAAAASyE/K1_HMbDY148ngFSqGeKydr10nHX6UgAagCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/DigitalAfterlifeBook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="431" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YLcjX9A5b0I/Xowu7SznRqI/AAAAAAAASyE/K1_HMbDY148ngFSqGeKydr10nHX6UgAagCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/DigitalAfterlifeBook.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<br />
Maggi's new book on Digital Afterlife is now out. The book delves deeper and wider into the topic of Digital Immortality introduced in our Virtual Humans book, and encompasses a wider range of artefacts and behaviours linked to the broader term of "Digital Afterlife". The book was co-edited by Victoria Mason-Robbie (with whom we've collaborated on other projects), and I have a chapter on the techie side of Digital Immortality, again digging a bit deeper than we could in the original book.<br />
<br />
More information on the <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Digital-Afterlife-Death-Matters-in-a-Digital-Age/Savin-Baden-Mason-Robbie/p/book/9780367337162">CRC site</a>, or you can buy from Amazon in the US or <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Afterlife-Artificial-Intelligence-Robotics/dp/0367337916">UK</a>, and all other good booksellers!<br />
<br />
<br />David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-25964493947481927052020-02-20T05:58:00.002-08:002020-02-20T05:58:32.488-08:00An Evaluation of a Linguistically Motivated Conversational Software Agent FrameworkA cracking paper from Dr Kulvinder Panesar of York St John University on a design for a "Conversational Software Agent" (aka chatbot) which seems to have all the elements we've been championing for some time:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Grammatical parsing</li>
<li>Speech acts</li>
<li>Dialogue management</li>
<li>Triples based memory</li>
<li>BDI motivation model</li>
</ul>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UquqLTCy3hQ/Xk6QeZ6JoHI/AAAAAAAASWw/Fy4JMrYWhu8kJb-ZASoNlU3BgBmcrhqnACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/KulvinderModel.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="826" data-original-width="1474" height="223" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UquqLTCy3hQ/Xk6QeZ6JoHI/AAAAAAAASWw/Fy4JMrYWhu8kJb-ZASoNlU3BgBmcrhqnACLcBGAsYHQ/s400/KulvinderModel.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
You can read the paper <a href="http://academia.edu/">Academia.edu</a>, and the work dates back to at least 2017, so a few papers to catch up on!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4825053397594831449.post-72310930712610713312020-02-18T05:39:00.000-08:002020-02-20T05:50:56.279-08:00New Book: Digital Afterlife<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3pi-Wb5U_4s/Xk6K1w0J0kI/AAAAAAAASWU/LPjRGBuyA2E96BLuiK2benaPZ8hJl4T2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/DigitalAfterlifeBook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="431" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3pi-Wb5U_4s/Xk6K1w0J0kI/AAAAAAAASWU/LPjRGBuyA2E96BLuiK2benaPZ8hJl4T2gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/DigitalAfterlifeBook.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<br />
Maggi Savin-Baden, co-author of Virtual Humans, has a new booking coming out in April on Digital Afterlife, subtitled "Death Matters in a Digital Age". We had a chapter on the topic in Virtual Humans and Maggi found there was so much interest in it (e.g. a recent story on Radio 4's Today programme which had a contribution from Dr Elaine Kasket who spoke at our book launch) that she put a whole book around the wider topic of Digital Afterlife. David has contributed a tech chapter looking more specifically at Virtual Personas within the context of Digital Afterlife/Digital Immortality.<br />
<br />
The book is due to be published in April by <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Digital-Afterlife-Death-Matters-in-a-Digital-Age/Savin-Baden-Mason-Robbie/p/book/9780367337162">Taylor and Francis</a> and you can pre-order now.<br />
<br />David Burdenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13336165481689169802noreply@blogger.com