
AI-Powered Meeting Scheduler X.ai Raises $9.2M Series A - danielrm26
http://mattturck.com/2015/01/05/x-ai-and-the-emergence-of-the-ai-powered-application-2/
======
aleyan
To get pleasantries out of the way, I am glad to see Matt Turck here on HN.
The meetup he hosts, Data Driven NYC, attracts a large number of both very
high caliber of guest speakers and attendees. The several times I have been
there, I enjoyed the presentations and the discussions afterwards thoroughly.
X.ai which I was introduced to at this meetup, was one of the more interesting
startups there. If I wasn't as happy as I am at Handy, x.ai would be foremost
among companies I would consider working at; their challenges are many. This
is one of the highest endorsements can be bestowed upon a firm and its product
by an engineer.

While x.ai is very exciting, I have several concerns about their product and
their chances at success.

1) Most meetings are scheduled internally within a firm where calendars are
visible and shared. An AI PA that simply locks down time slots doesn't have
much value add beyond what the calendars currently provide.

2) There are privacy concerns. Many will not trust x.ai with their calendar
data due to concerns about x.ai data-mining or sharing their data.

3) There are other privacy concerns. People may not trust Amy and Andrew not
to be social engineered by others to leak their calendars. The fact that
person is busy at a certain time or for a certain duration or within a certain
vicinity is potentially useful to people whose goals are more than just
scheduling a meeting. This kind of over sharing may not be worse than goes on
with Facebook, but the letters A.I. will make it sound scarier.

My last point is a wish. Most of my non-work meetings are scheduled over #1
text messaging and #2 Facebook. I would like to see x.ai support other mediums
than just email.

~~~
graycat
Where's the _AI_ part?

The video clip talked about _learning_ \-- what's to learn?

For the sharing of calendars, why is that necessary?

So, my software sends you and three other people e-mail asking for a meeting
with all of us somewhere in NYC Midtown next week.

So, each of you sends back some candidate times.

If you have the same software, it grabs the e-mail (say, from some tag in the
header lines) and sends back to my e-mail some candidate times. My software
answers, and there is a _negotiation_. If each person invited has the same
software, then the software can negotiate, very soon, when all the software
_agents_ can be available to negotiate with my software agent, and then the
negotiation can go really fast.

Sure, if your software proposes several times and my software won't accept any
of those, then someone looking at the e-mail flows could find times when I was
busy. A biggie? Maybe not.

Once all the agents are available, they could negotiate how to communicate
peer to peer, that is, faster than e-mail, and really extensive negotiations
could be done in less than a second. And the peer to peer traffic could be
encrypted and, really, not easily available otherwise, that is, relatively
secure.

My agent could have my appointments already and know when I will be at a
meeting in NJ and consider my travel time to NYC Midtown to know when I could
be available at Midtown.

What else to do?

What's wrong with that outline?

Where's the _AI_ or the _learning_ needed?

Yes, there could be some high push for _virality_ and a _network effect_.

But, then, still, there's no very good barrier to entry. I.e., it's awfully
easy to program, and if the scheduling software of some one company wants to
schedule only with other copies of their software, then a _disrupting_ company
could offer to have _open_ communications and be willing to schedule with
other software. Then this little idea would go for nearly a freebie, and no
one would make any money.

Ah, but encrypted communications and communicating with other software combine
to yield a security problem -- anyone could write fake software that would
report the unencrypted data. More generally, does look _hackable_ so that
there would be security risks.

Maybe a _must-have_ for some people, but if they are meeting outside their
office then there's a lot of travel likely. In that case, maybe use video
conferencing.

I don't see much of a business opportunity there.

~~~
fchollet
> Where's the AI needed?

Marketing, I assume. Giving people their very own Jarvis to interact with
could be a selling point (even if it's less efficient than a GUI-based
scheduling solution), and the "AI" buzzword will certainly draw more attention
to the product than a scheduling app would normally get.

~~~
dmortensen
Building a conversation model which can negotiate with multiple guests on
behalf of the host in plain english is not easy (for us). This includes simple
social concepts such as "compromise" \- say, when to push for one location
over another. The information extraction problem alone is a major challenge.

No buzzwords needed, we are just trying to do some good work, and if we
succeed, we think many people would like it:
[https://twitter.com/search?q=xdotai](https://twitter.com/search?q=xdotai)

~~~
graycat
> plain English

Gads. That's tough to do well, and as a user I'd always wonder if the software
got it right unless I just kept checking.

And why try with plain English? Heck, long ago I commonly wrote Fortran
programs with very easy to use input: Start with a file that asks for all the
data. Each line of that file starts with some character to indicate that the
line is such a request and with, say, a number, to indicate what request it
is. Then a user just types in their data after each such request. It's dirt
simple to implement and for users to use. So, for human readable input, just
do it that way. Natural language understanding -- f'get about it.

Once I programmed something where the human input was a lot like XML -- really
simple to use.

~~~
dmortensen
I agree and I could easily see myself use something like that. However, I want
something (naively perhaps) which my Mom can use. My worst nightmare is one
where early users inadvertently create some sort of "syntax" which my mom use
to discard this as a service for her. Like she discarded the idea of twitter,
because people created a RT, MT $bla #bla etc. "syntax".

~~~
graycat
Your goal is fine, fully appropriate. Of course your mom should be able to use
it; anyone who can type and read should be able to use it. Fine. And there is
no need for any nonsense gibberish such as "RT, MT".

But, I believe you are over estimating the importance of having some natural
language understanding, under estimating the difficulty of achieving that
understanding reliably in software, and are very much under estimating how
easy to use, even for your mother, for anyone who can type, something like I
outlined can be.

E.g., when I was in grad school, I took out some time to earn some money so
that my wife and I could complete our Ph.D. degrees. For the money, I worked
as an applied mathematician, computer guy in a research shop doing work mostly
for the US Navy. So, yes, we had secretaries who did a lot of typing but had
no word processing.

As part of my work in applied math, I ended up as system administrator of a
super-mini computer. Of course, for programming, it had a text editor. If only
for writing the computer manuals, it had a simple text formatting program,
call it a member of the family of Runoff programs. And I'd gotten a daisy
wheel printer nicely driven -- asynchronous serial communications with ASCII
characters and the XON/XOFF handshaking (pacing) protocol -- by the computer.
So, we were GO to do a LOT of typing.

Soon enough the secretaries wanted to get on board with this new stuff. So,
for them, one at a time, we pulled some 5 conductor, general purpose signal
cable with a 25 pin plug at each end (we only connected the pins for the
signals SEND, RECEIVE, and SIGNAL GROUND), and a dumb terminal.

Bottom line: All the secretaries got on board right away. The ones without a
terminal begged for one. No one ever gave one of the secretaries more than a
few minutes of 'training'. They all caught on right away, to logon, files, the
hierarchical file system, the text editor, the runoff program, the daisy wheel
printer, etc. Right away.

Later as a college prof, I did the same for the business school, and again the
secretaries 'got it' right away.

Gee, we weren't asking them to write macros in TeX!

So, back to my suggestion:

You want an appointment. So, you send something like

    
    
         === May we meet?  Let's pick a time and place.
    
         === My name
    
         === My job
    
         === My e-mail address
    
         === My phone number
    
         === Subject of meeting
    
         === When to meet
    
         === Where to meet
    

or some such. Then you use just typing to insert data under each of these or
some such, likely need something better, but you get the idea, and send your
e-mail.

A human, including your mother, can read it and respond. And they can respond
with a similar e-mail.

If either end of the communications is using your software, then the software
can read that data and make sense of it much easier than for natural language
processing.

Or, send the person some e-mail with a URL to a server with a Web page with a
form and some JavaScript to help the person fill out the form. Then we're into
just a Web form solution that we know very well how to handle.

Forms work great; people are really good at entering data into forms.

For people who have your app, it can replace the Web site.

No way do you have to use gibberish such as "RT, MT". Instead, everything a
user reads can be in complete English sentences with a button with Help for
more explanations, etc. It can be easier to use than most Web forms, and 1+
billion people use those. It can be easier to use than Google, e.g., where
Google has those little horizontal bars to indicate (I never got that memo or
read any explanation in a help message) for more options. Last I checked,
Google had a lot of users. It can be easier to use than the Amazon Web site,
easier to use than Facebook.

You are underestimating the ability of your target users to make use of simple
computer user interfaces.

My guess is that there is no way natural language processing can be good
enough that, net, it is easier to use than just some simple forms or something
like I outlined above.

Gibberish like "RT, MT" is really a straw man to knock down. Instead, never
but never should there ever be any gibberish or undefined terminology or
undefined acronyms in any user interface. That rule is easy to obey, and
natural language processing is a very hard way to obey it.

The real business need and opportunity is meeting scheduling, not finding work
for natural language processing.

------
zaroth
Does the highly conversational tone make it easier or harder to parse?

Because, I for one, would feel uncomfortable using such a conversational tone
with an algorithm. I'm curious if they are encouraging anthropomorphism
because...

    
    
      Amy will succeed more often in parsing this style of writing?
      This is how people *want* to talk to their AI scheduler?
      People should think of "Amy" as maybe a little-bit human?
      People should *confuse* "Amy" with a human?
      The more natural tone will increase user engagement?
    

I for one would write to my AI scheduler in a much more direct tone. "Will
miss tomorrow's 1pm", "Reschedule John, late next week.", "Will get in
Wednesday after noon.", etc. No "Hi Amy", no complete sentences, no banter for
me at least. It does remind me a bit of "Her", and the premise that one should
not be overly colloquial with one's computers.

Edit: I just went to the site and saw the ad copy for 'How it works'. It
appears the answer is closer to making the Amy algorithm actually appear
human. Users pretend they are CC'ing a real person, and unless the other
participants on the email know better, they converse with amy@x.ai as if it
really is a human? That is ELIZA territory and trying to actually beat the
Turing test is a lofty goal indeed, I think far surpassing the challenge of
merely scheduling meetings.

~~~
timClicks
Looking at the jobs page, it looks as if the Amy AI doesn't exist yet. Amy
will be a large corps of low paid staff until she has lots of training data.

------
blazespin
This is pure astroturf. There are dozens of solutions already for this, not to
mention most corporations you can just view someone's calendar and pick a time
whenever everyone is available.

~~~
timlin
Have you attempted to schedule a meeting with 3 busy people in your company
with 3 busy executives and PMs from a client? It is annoying and frustrating.

Most of the solutions I'm familiar with require all scheduling parties to be
on the same Exchange Server with calendar busy/away shared. Or you have to
click-thru to a website and then deal with creating a user account.

Using email seems like a nice friction-free way forward. I hope they get
traction!

~~~
jacalata
Sure - but the solution usually involves deciding who the least important
attendees are, scheduling it over their busy calendar times whenever it suits
the execs, and expecting them to suck it up. I don't see how AI is going to
help with that.

------
fchollet
Forcing humans to use written natural language when dealing with a machine
(complete with politeness formulas, etc) seems like a dreadfully inefficient
UX.

Why force users to type several sentences (minutes wasted on a mobile device)
when a couple taps/click in a GUI would suffice? Not to mention the risk for
ambiguity that lies in natural language processing (unless this company has
already solved the problem of strong AI?).

~~~
yummyfajitas
Amy (the humanized name of the X.ai bot) is about the worst and most intrusive
business tool I've encountered. My business partner uses the "amy" bot. It
likes to spam me with 20 questions about when to schedule a meeting, each time
asking me for other times whenever something doesn't work. And god help me if
I ever forget to put an "IST" after _every single time_ I mention. If I send
it "8PM IST, 9PM IST or 10PM", there is a good chance it will give me a 10PM
EST meeting.

In contrast, consider doodle ([http://doodle.com/](http://doodle.com/)), which
is exactly the GUI you are imagining. It shows me a grid of possible times. I
click the times that are good. It detects my location and automatically
displays times in IST. Takes me about 15 seconds to use with no confusion.

X.ai seems to be solving the problem of "I wish I had a secretary, but can't
afford one". That's not the same problem as "lets schedule meetings in the
most efficient way possible".

Dear x.ai folks, if any of you are reading this thread: please clone doodle
and stick an x.ai/doodle link into the amy emails. If you do this, I'll
consider deleting the gmail filter which currently blocks all emails from
x.ai.

~~~
zaroth
Doodle is interesting, thanks for mentioning them. But I was exploring their
product and come to find they list SSL as a paid feature on their "Private"
plan. SSL is really, truly not a paid feature. I found that off-putting and a
bit shameful.

~~~
yummyfajitas
True, you need to pay them a shocking 2.5 euros/month in order to access all
the important features (calendar integration, SSL, etc). Why don't the devs
there just work for free?

Incidentally I don't mean to suggest doodle as necessarily the best service of
this sort. The only reason I remember doodle specifically is because someone
used it on me last week.

~~~
zaroth
Hmm... You should absolutely pay for features, if you want them, I would never
say otherwise. My point is that SSL is not a feature, it's table stakes. Are
you saying you think SSL on your login form is an upsell?

Having this discussion on Twitter right now with one of their developers. Go
to their home page and click 'Sign in'. See the username/password prompt? Now,
look at the URL bar. See something missing? In fact, the request is POST to
[https://..](https://..). but the point is the user has no assurance that's
the case. A web login form MUST be served from a top-level document under
HTTPS.

The weird thing is that, in fact, the dev said they do provide SSL when logged
into the app all the time to all users. It's only SSL on their public site
that they only provide to paying customers. Well, I don't get that at all. And
anyway it seems broken because I have a 14-day Premium Trial and I'm not
getting that "feature". Just altogether very weird vibe. Anyway, this is now
way OT for this thread.

------
NhanH
Now that's the first startup I've been excited to read about in a while. It
seems to be a very sensible first step in solving the "email inbox is our new
todo list" [0] that pg mentioned a few years ago. If they actually success
(sadly, it seems they're still in some kind of beta mode), there is a whole
vertical of gazillions things with regards to email that they can follow up
on.

Interestingly, in a sense as more people are using it, there's a chance that
the technical aspect get easier (two x.ai users try to schedule something!).
At least until a (hypothetical and will never happen) scenario in which every
single email users will be using x.ai, at which point the program turns into a
giant optimization and scheduling program, which will be hard - just something
fun to think about.

Also, holy buzzwords and business-speak, I really like the startup, but I feel
uneasy reading the article.

[0]:
[http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html](http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html)

------
beams_of_light
I work at a Fortune 50. Eventually, it'd be great to have something like x.ai
"watching" emails fly through an internal SMTP server, and then decide if
parties external to the conversation ought to be involved. There's a good
amount of effort duplication and projects which fall short of their true
potential because the right humans weren't involved.

~~~
xerophyte12932
Sure it sounds cool that if Alice asks Bob about some internal API and Bob
says he doesn't know about it much, the system should suggest involving Carl
who actually wrote the API. But who would want a system to read their emails?
Heck even if you imagine the whole situation in real life, where you randomly
pop in between two strangers and give them a suggestion (no matter how useful)
they will consider you a creep for eavesdropping on them. Do this often enough
and you are bound to be chased through the streets by an angry mob.

Plus, think of all the times the AI doesn't understand the conversation and
makes crappy suggestions. Like each time that API is cmentioned, suppose the
system says "involve Carl! He's a Pro". i Can see this getting annoying really
fast

------
alexatkeplar
I've signed up and am looking forward to giving X.ai a go.

The thing I'm puzzled by is how Amy can possibly follow the most important
rule of physical meeting scheduling, namely: "you go to the money, the money
doesn't come to you". In other words: vendor goes to startup founder's office,
startup founder goes to VC's office, VC goes to LP's office... How does Amy
know enough about your business hierarchy to respect that rule?

~~~
dmortensen
Absolutely agree. We must understand the social dynamics that are inherently
built into every meeting - and this is one 4 major challenges we are working
on going forward.

But our early beta users should not be to shy to cue in Amy:

\- Amy, set something up with Lerer in Soho

\- Amy, can you arrange breakfast with Matt and FirstMark please. They can
pick a place.

\- Amy, setup a data science / whiteboard chat for Prateek and I *

* My default meeting location is 48 Wall (Amy knows that, and simply assume I want this location used for a new candidate interview)

~~~
applecore
_> Amy, set something up with Lerer in Soho_

Could Amy differentiate Ken and Ben from the context?

~~~
dmortensen
Well, I cc'ed Eric, Ken and Taylor, and Amy worked with them individually to
find the best time. Upon conclusion, she sent the invite AND out came a
$check. ;)

------
anemitz
This looks very similar to [https://claralabs.com](https://claralabs.com). Is
the tech / process basically the same between the companies?

~~~
snowmaker
They are competitors. But neither has released details on how the tech behind
the scenes works.

------
jpatokal
Note that Amy isn't actually all AI:

> Q. Is Amy human?

> A. I am one part machine, and one part Human! The important part is that I
> handle your requests properly all the time.

[https://x.ai/faq/](https://x.ai/faq/)

~~~
dmortensen
The human part is a data annotation part, something which helps us move
towards full automation. There is obviously no way a human operation will ever
get to the end of those ~10 Billion formal meetings being scheduled in the US
every year. Heck, we might die trying to fully automate this and we are
certainly not finished yet, but I think we are off to a good start and we are
fighting for that 100% Automation goal every single day. Feel free to email me
if you want to join 24 other propellerheads on that mission :)

~~~
strebler
A treacherous path you tread, seeking 100% automation...hmmmm

~~~
dmortensen
My bad, let me rephrase, near 100%. Super naive perhaps, but we feel it is
worth a shot. Hell, we might die trying, but we'll certainly come out a whole
lot wiser on the other side.

------
hooande
If this product develops successfully and gains adoption, it will be a huge
deal. I've heard repeatedly that scheduling is one of the biggest problems
that executives have and it's one of the main reasons that they get personal
assistants. It's good to have someone to get coffee or pick up laundry, but
scheduling back and forth is a tedious task that takes up a lot of time. I've
been thinking about an ai solution to this for awhile now, it's good to see
one emerge and be used in the wild.

The concept of a good ai based personal assistant is one of the Next Big
Things. And I mean facebook size big thing. If the busiest and most important
people in society start doing all of their scheduling through one software
platform it won't be long before everyone else follows. And that opens the
door to all kinds of other social and communication services. "Have your bot
talk to my bot and we'll figure out a good time to meet up". Maintaining a
list of your friends and contacts is important, but algorithmically
maintaining your relationships and schedule is even moreso. Ton of value here
waiting to be unlocked.

As with all data based applications, the value increases exponentially with
the amount of data being analyzed. The ideal personal assistant is one that
will make the same decisions that you would make in the absence of
instruction. If you tell a PA "book dinner reservations for my wife and I next
thursday", a good assistant will know what kind of restaurant is appropriate,
where you like to sit, whether you prefer dinner at 7:30 or 8:30, etc. You
don't have to say, because they learn your preferences from the data they've
collected from you and previous employers. Just like a computer would. There
are a ton of small breakthroughs and conceptual leaps to be made between there
and where we are now and the field is still wide open. x.ai seems like an
encouraging step in that direction, one that I'll be watching closely.

~~~
soup10
I think you could accurately say machine learning is a subfield of ai. I think
of it as the mathematical toolbag with which many ai applications are built.

(Before he edited his post OP had a comment about the confusion between the
terms 'machine learning' and 'artificial intelligence')... Put another way I
think machine learning specifically refers to the mathematical ideas used to
teach things to a machine, and the ai to the resulting entity which often
makes use machine learning techniques(usually in addition to specialized code
specific to the application).

I think some people feel that "general intelligence" would require a paradigm
that somehow transcends math and algorithms which seem to only result in
specialized a.i's. And that maybe it all needs to be tossed out and re-
examined with a blank slate. On the other hand, i would suggest that
specialized ai software will become more and more generalized until we can't
tell the difference. I think it's all about having a sane perspective. In this
day and age with machines and gadgets in every room, man-made artifacts teach
us how to think, and we teach machines how to think in a recursive
interdependent cycle.

In that sense reaching the final goal post means progressively improving our
machines to be active communicators and good listeners, to the point where
they can learn things from each other. Eventually their interactions will
become complex enough that their communications will be unpredictable but
still productive on the whole. So we'll leave them on so they can talk. At
which point you could call it a society of machines....

Anyway I guess the point is specificity of language seems to be important
learning and thinking about AIs.

~~~
fchollet
> I think you could accurately say machine learning is a subfield of ai.

Yes, that is a widely accepted view of AI/ML. "AI" designates any method to
give machines cognitive capabilities, while ML is a particular family of
techniques (statistical learning) for giving machine such capabilities. Other
branches of AI would include symbolic AI, expert systems, and other 70s
techniques where processes were explicitly programmed rather than learned from
data.

Today, because these other branches have largely fallen out of favor over the
past 40 years, ML has become almost synonymous with AI. The semantic
distinction is still there, though.

------
igrekel
Definitely sounds promising, I spend a lot of time either seeing up meetings
myself or syncing with people who need to invite me to one. The FAQ actually
answers none of the questions I ask myself in considering to try it.

Is it good at dealing with timezones? I always get invited to meetings where
people give me the time in their timezone, I have to realize that time
wouldn't make sense for them if it was in my timezone etc etc.

The other question is regarding the fact that I don't communicate with
everyone in english. There is no mention of how good Amy is when switching to
and from different languages. This last one is one of the reasons I never used
virtual assistants.

~~~
pearb09
Amy (the "AI Assistant") loves timezones and does exactly what you suggest.
Speaks to each participant in their local timezone, understand what time it is
for each participant so no silly suggestions are made, and she understands the
concept of compromise when somebody in New York is to meet with a guy in
Singapore (where no great time really exist for either party).
[https://twitter.com/thinkstorm/status/554776145800232960](https://twitter.com/thinkstorm/status/554776145800232960)

Finally, she only understands English today (2015). We are super ambitious,
but we want Amy to perfect one language at a time. dmortensen keeps pitching
for Danish as Amy's next language around the office...we'll see.

~~~
igrekel
Definitely sounds promising, will give it a try

------
pmontra
What if one doesn't use any calendar product? I usually agree with my business
partners on a date/time by voice, then more often than not they create a GC
event (probably to mark it in their agenda) and I get an email that I don't
answer. They know I'll be there. I guess that x.ai is valuable if people don't
talk each other and let it decide the time of the meeting but it probably
works only if one annotates all his/her life in a calendar.

~~~
dmortensen
Amy (The AI Assistant) remember all the meetings she set up for you (and
she'll remind you if needed) - so even if you did not have a calendar, she
would avoid conflicts (unless you hide things from her).

We have this fantasy (delusion perhaps) of us becoming arbiters of time. You
don't need a calendar, because Amy will help manage your time. One step at a
time though and the problem is hard enough as is, before we print "Arbiter of
Time" t-shirts.

~~~
mkolodny
How does Amy know what time to schedule the first meeting she sets up for you?
Do you have to suggest a couple of times? Or do you have to set up a Google
Calendar for Amy?

------
lightlike
Much of the wording on their website is annoyingly imprecise --

> N-Gram, the latter part of her surname, is a technique used in computational
> linguistics.

it's not a technique; it's just a name for a sequence of n things. Also, I've
never seen the 'N' or 'G' capitalized.

~~~
dmortensen
Well, Matt Casey and I thought it was clever, if not a bit funny; Amy Ingram,
A.I. and Ngram in one. What's not to like!? :-)

~~~
jzwinck
Here are some people who are not going to like it:
[https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?firstName=AMY&lastName=IN...](https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?firstName=AMY&lastName=INGRAM)

[105 of them as I write this...plus their coworkers.]

~~~
dmortensen
I am not sure I would be offended if somebody called a service "Dennis"
(probably the opposite). That aside, use Andrew Ingram instead, or name her
yourself and move her to your domain (the most obvious premium product we have
in mind).

------
zapt02
What happens when two Amy's talk to each other?

~~~
petercooper
_when two people using x.ai try to schedule a meeting (and regardless of
whether one is on Google Calendar and the other on Exchange for example), then
meetings get immediately scheduled without any of the usual back and forth._

~~~
dmortensen
* [https://x.ai/faq/#two-robots-one-meeting](https://x.ai/faq/#two-robots-one-meeting) :)

------
zeratul
Many points raised here are valid concerns and should be addressed by the data
scientists when designing the system.

Let's just not forget about the positives here: there is a company that openly
uses term "A.I." and raised a lot of money. Am I the only one here waiting for
the AI Winter to be over [1]? Maybe it's not the best A.I., yet, but they got
the funding. Personally, I think that's great and I hope for others to come
out of the closet.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter)

~~~
fchollet
The AI winter has been over for a couple years, we're in the middle of a
torrid summer right now (triggered by the deep learning craze). There is a
rush in the VC world to throw millions at any new AI startup, especially if it
has "deep learning" in its pitch deck.

So far it has paid out, because large tech companies (Google, Facebook, Baidu,
etc.) have been on a deep learning startup acqui-hiring spree. It might not
last, though. Any company that bases its marketing on "AI" and subsequently
fails to deliver is bringing us closer to the _next_ AI winter.

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bsenftner
His points about specialized AIs are spot on. I have a specialized AI start up
where we trained software to do realistic 3D reconstruction of humans. Our AI
simply knows how to go from photo to 3D via knowledge of the human face. We
inter-operate with conversational agents to create lip syncing knowledge base
backed avatars. www.3D-Avatar-Store.com is the site. We're constantly learning
of and meeting with other specialized AI companies and combining efforts to
create pretty interesting pipelines of capabilities for various projects.

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dj-wonk
Good personal assistants (e.g. executive assistants) also base their
information on information not available in email; e.g. conversations and non-
verbal cues. Good ones carefully guard and (implicitly) prioritize their boss'
time. I am skeptical that an AI lacking such information would have the
necessary data to replace a human.

~~~
olefoo
Doesn't need to replace a human; just needs to be Good Enough™ to save the
human 80% of the time they would spend in unproductive back and forth.

Just like a dishwasher is not a replacement for a scullery maid; and won't
individually polish each piece of silverware like a proper butler. This
doesn't need to be a human level fully rounded intelligence imbued with
common-sense. It just needs to be able to reconcile schedules and locations
and travel times.

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bojo
The series starting with "Avogadro Corp" by William Hertling comes to mind.
Looking forward to our AI overlords.

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Synergyse
Interesting idea and nice execution. Should real assistants be worried?

~~~
dmortensen
Not really. I honestly think the current assistant and all his human ingenuity
could be better utilized on other tasks.

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junto
My new web app is a big data AI dynamic tooling process management social
engagement change tool. Can I have some money thrown at me please?

~~~
dmortensen
hey man, ..we just schedule meetings! :)

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eli_gottlieb
Yes, exactly his point. Scheduling meetings doesn't get more exciting because
you strap some statistical natural-language processing to it and call it "AI",
as if that was a meaningful term.

~~~
dmortensen
It's not supposed to be exciting; 87 US knowledge workers schedule a little
bit above 10 billion meetings a year. I just want to help them do that (no
more, no less). Users couldn't care less how it is done and I would be very
hesitant to market this under any "AI"/STAT/ML/NLP moniker. So back to my
starting point - we just schedule meetings.

