

Ask HN: AI on the open web? Really? - denniskane

My site is https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urdesk.net<p>It is a full-blown OS-in-a-browser.  After 2+ years working on the nuts and bolts of the system and a few silly apps, I have recently gone all-in with the AI concept that initially turned me on to programming.<p>Using dynamically generated SVG faces, and the Chrome JS APIs for voice recognition and synthesis, I have been able to create a kind of &quot;Hello World&quot; example of AI. To jump right into it with Chrome, see https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.urdesk.net&#x2F;desk?intro=bertie<p>I am currently working on integrating the &quot;Brain&quot; module that parses the natural language input with the terminal, so users will really be able to dig into the internals.<p>My goal is to move towards full-blown run time configurability so that developers will be able to provide their own SVG faces, response templates, and even entire ontology schemas in order to develop domain-specific AI&#x27;s.<p>Right now, the AI obviously only has a lone sense of hearing.  The next sense to work on might be seeing, by way of capturing webcam stills and running them through a machine vision algorithm.  I really doubt that there will be a JS API for vision any time soon... maybe a Native Client module could do the trick (at least for very basic seeing).<p>Given the AI prototype that I&#x27;ve developed that uses only Web technologies (even if they are non-standard&#x2F;Chrome-only) what do you think about starting to turn the online world upside down?  For instance, it is pretty simple to connect all of this to the outside world via local node instances that can be talked to very efficiently with websockets, which can then send control signals to real world objects using modules like johnny-five (a JS robotics interface).<p>All I&#x27;m saying is that I am so infinitely sick-and-tired of the lame MVC&#x2F;Backbone&#x2F;React&#x2F;Docker&#x2F;whatever silliness that just doesn&#x27;t do anything, if by &quot;do&quot;, we mean having some effect on the world above and beyond painting some pixels on a boring LCD!<p>Who&#x27;s with me?
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danso
Sounds like an interesting project but not sure it needed a swipe at
"MVC/Backbone/React/Docker/whatever silliness that just doesn't do
anything"...just because foundations aren't as visible as what sits atop them
doesn't mean they're silly pieces of engineering.

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denniskane
If you think you think those things seriously qualify as "foundations", well,
you're just wrong in my opinion. At least for my purposes, the only important
foundational tools are the language (JavaScript) and the runtime environment
that supports it (Chrome/V8). Everything else is just so much hot air that
only gets in the way.

I am honestly a "foundational" kind of a dude. I was into philosophy before I
was ever into technology.

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sethjgore
I'm with you. I already am developing something similar to this on my own.
Would love to chat and see what kind of product we can work on together.

This world can be so much better with an Web based OS. Especially one that's
personal and listens to you.

Sethjgore@gmail.com

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denniskane
Cool! Although... I don't know how much the _entire_ world can benefit from
first-world tech innovation, I do think there is quite a wild frontier out
there for people who are serious about pushing forward with the whole
AI/robotics/"Internet of Things" meme. If you don't have a good mental
mechanism for filtering out the noise related to all the "hot new right now
frameworky schemes", then too much effort is spent on issues that are truly
not real issues, and real innovation just isn't possible.

Will ping you from my "official" gmail...

