The Companions a possible future Integrating concept Yorick Wilks ILASH University of Sheffield, UK The Companions a possible future Integrating concept Yorick Wilks ILASH University of Sheffield, UK Roadmap Workshop LREC 2002 Las Canarias

The future of Human Language Processing R&D  The Research Issues are not solved, but..  It is generally agreed what the issues are: –Dialogue and interface issues –Information access issues (Semantic Web..) –Information presentation issues  But HLT must not be swallowed up in VR, Intelligent systems etc. implementations if the research frontier in HLT is to advance.

An idea for integrating the research agenda in a new application...  That meets social and economic needs (rather than defence)  That is not simply a product but everyone will want one if it succeeds  That cannot be done now but can in six years by a series of staged prototypes  That modularises easily for large project management, and whose modules cover the research issues.

A series of intelligent and sociable COMPANIONS  The SeniorCompanion –The EU will have more and more old people who find technological life hard to handle –The SC will sit beside you on the sofa but be easy to carry about

The Senior Companion….. –It will explain the plots of TV programs and help choose them for you –It will know you and what you like and don’t –It wills send your messages, make calls and summon emergency help.

The Senior Companion….  It will explain official communications  It will answer questions from web contact  Remind you what was said by visitors  Remind you of where you should be..  Store your early memories should you wish to confide them  It will know and monitor your state of health  BUT it will be YOUR COMPANION, not the State’s!

Other COMPANIONS  The JuniorCompanion –Teaches and advises, maybe a backpack –Warns of dangerous situations –Helps with homework and web search –Helps with languages –Knows where the child is………. –Explains ambient signals and information –Messaging to parents/school when needed

All companions advance the research, social and economic agendas  The MeetingCompanion –Separates speaker audio streams –Transcribes and summaries the meeting –Suggests ways in which to advance agenda points –Captures and preserves the practice of solutions developed by a group (KM)

We can prototype all these COMPANIONs with incremental advances on the HLT technologies we now have.  Speech and language dialogue models, including messages and multimodals  Deriving models of agents’ beliefs/ontologies/lexicons  Content-based extraction from large resources, including structure building  Document production, summarization, classification, authoring and translation.

Given all that, would the COMPANIONS still be a paradigm...  That will advance our research agenda?  and have a distinctively HLT element?  that will create a market (cf. Tamagotchi)?  that will find new markets for e.f. Telecoms?  that will aid citizen sectors?  that will be a device acceptable to citizens?

More COMPANION questions….  that will be modularizable within a large project?  that could show striking advance withing a full project lifetime (3-6yrs)?  that will build on existing EU expertise?  that will be evaluable?  that will not violate privacy considerations?  that is essentially multilingual?  that needs resources?