Machines that think for you

Went to a talk this Wednesday about “customer relationship management systems“–basically call support centers and the software that runs them. Interesting to me was the fact that basically untrained employees come in to work, and sit down at a computer that prompts them to ask certain questions of the caller–so in theory, the computer is doing all the decision-making.

Of course I thought about how that could be applied to everyday life–in conversations with friends, business associates, etc. What if you had a little display that constantly scanned the conversation for keywords, and prompted you with information that might be useful at that time? I doubt it would be allowed to actually script the conversation–but if it was good enough, who knows?

I can certainly see this turning debate tournaments into something different–instead of the person with the most memory winning, it would be the person who could process data the fastest and be most creative with it. That I would watch.

Slashdot article on the rise of cognitive machines.