Ontolog Invited Speaker Presentation - Adam Cheyer & Tom Gruber on "Siri" - Thu 2010.02.25    (28DJ)

Note: to allow us to share the latest in commercial deployment of ontology-based technology, this invited talk will be featured under a special waiver to Siri on the Ontolog IPR Policy.    (292U)

Agenda & Proceedings:    (29N5)

http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/Siri_20100225/TomGruber_20100225c.png . . . . . . . . http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/Siri_20100225/AdamCheyer_20100225c.png    (29ND)

          [Dr. Tom Gruber]                        [Mr. Adam Cheyer]    (29NE)

Siri is a Virtual Personal Assistant ... more specifically, an intelligent software one would download into his mobile device (like an iPhone or a Nexus One phone) and have it start "doing" things for you like an assistant.    (29NG)

Siri was born out of SRI's CALO Project (which Adam presented here before), the largest Artificial Intelligence project in U.S. history. (CALO stands for Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes). Made possible by a $150 million DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) investment, the CALO Project included 25 research organizations and institutions and spanned 5 years.    (29NH)

Among other accolades, Siri has been recognized by the MIT Technology Review as one of their "TR 10" in 2009 - the magazine's annual recognition of the list of top 10 emerging technologies that can change the way we live.    (29NI)

Started in 2007 in a stealth mode, Siri has finally released their product earlier this month. We are glad Adam and Tom (who co-founded Siri, along with Dag Kittlaus) can come and give us a talk and a demo on this brainchild of theirs and their team.    (29NJ)

Adam Cheyer is a co-founder and Siri's VP of Engineering. He joined the company from SRI, where he was the Program Director in SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center and Chief Architect of the CALO/PAL project. A pioneer in the areas of distributed computing, intelligent agents, and advanced user interfaces, Adam is the author of more than fifty peer-reviewed publications and nine patents. He was previously the VP of Engineering at Dejima and the VP of Engineering at Verticalnet. Adam is also a founding member of Change.org and Genetic Finance, LLC.    (29NL)

Tom Gruber is a co-founder and Siri's Chief Technology Officer. He, of course, is best known to this community as the Stanford scientist who, back in 1992, defined the term "ontology" in the sense we apply to its use in computer science, artificial intelligence and the semantic web these days. Tom is a researcher and entrepreneur with a focus on systems for knowledge sharing, collaboration, and collective intelligence. He did foundational work in ontology engineering with approaches and technologies that are precursors to the infrastructure for today's Semantic Web.    (29NM)

Transcript of the online chat during the session:    (29NN)

 see raw transcript here.    (29NO)
 (for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)
 Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.    (29NP)
	PeterYim: .    (2A1Y)
	Welcome to the Ontolog Invited Speaker Presentation - Thu 2010.02.25    (2A1Z)
	* Invited Speakers: Mr. AdamCheyer & Dr. TomGruber (Siri, Inc.)    (2A20)
	* Title: "Siri: An Ontology-driven Application for the Masses"    (2A21)
	Please refer to details on the session page at:
	  http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2010_02_25
	.    (2A22)
	anonymous morphed into JackRing    (2A23)
	anonymous1 morphed into JimDisbrow    (2A24)
	anonymous morphed into Hasan Sayani    (2A25)
	anonymous morphed into JoelBender    (2A26)
	PeterYim: we are running a webex shared-screen session today (info just posted) ... please refresh 
	your session page, and follow instructions at the top of that page - 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2010_02_25    (2A27)
	JoelBender: Peter, step 3 says "Enter the meeting password: ontology123" and it doesn't seem to need 
	the password.    (2A28)
	PeterYim: thansk, Joel ...    (2A29)
	anonymous morphed into Tejas Lagvankar    (2A2A)
	anonymous morphed into JimDisbrow    (2A2B)
	anonymous morphed into Geroge Terre    (2A2C)
	anonymous morphed into JoelBender    (2A2D)
	anonymous morphed into Tom    (2A2E)
	Tom morphed into TomGruber and AdamCheyer    (2A2F)
	anonymous: Richard Christian Brown (UNF)    (2A2G)
	anonymous morphed into Richard Christian Brown    (2A2H)
	Richard Christian Brown morphed into Richard Christian Brown    (2A2I)
	anonymous1 morphed into Ellie Trevarthen    (2A2J)
	anonymous morphed into TJ    (2A2K)
	anonymous morphed into michael    (2A2L)
	anonymous morphed into John McGrath    (2A2M)
	anonymous morphed into ElizabethFlorescu    (2A2N)
	michael: Is there a limit to the web ex..just got an error saying only 15 people allowed in webex    (2A2O)
	michael: I got a network error for the vnc2    (2A2P)
	ArturoSanchez: There is a limit of 15 connections on the Web-Ex site ...    (2A2Q)
	ArturoSanchez: Question for presenters: are you developing an extensible architecture to support 
	changes organically?    (2A2R)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: does Siri know/learn about personal preferences?    (2A2S)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: what is the range of the context associated with the questions posed to 
	Siri? Can Siri also learn about new contexts?    (2A2T)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: if you ad a friend named "Siri" would Siri know it has to ask you who you 
	are referring to?    (2A2U)
	michael: How does the company intend to make money with this tool?    (2A2V)
	Ellie Trevarthen: How is the speech interface affected by background noise -- i.e. if one is using 
	Siri in a crowded place, vehicle, etc.?    (2A2W)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: how is the ontology represented in Siri? Do you use your own inference 
	engine?    (2A2X)
	John McGrath: Question: I see the system uses NLP to understand term meaning and 
	intent. Is there a query syntax standard for the various services or is their a custom interface 
	require for each service? Or do they need to create an API to a Siri standard?    (2A2Y)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: "Find the best restaurant around according to Zagat and Martha Stewart" how 
	would Siri handle this question?    (2A2Z)
	Richard Christian Brown: Can we take a break to answer some questions?    (2A30)
	PeterYim1: @Richard Christian Brown - we'll be doing Q&A after the presentation and demo ... try 
	using this chat room to type out your question(s) first, if you please    (2A31)
	michael: CAn you please tell us the name of the tools they are using? are they home grown or 
	commercial products?    (2A32)
	PeterYim: I am somewhat surprised Adam's voice worked on Tom's phone ... do you need to "train" the 
	voice recognition?    (2A33)
	Richard Christian Brown: *noted    (2A34)
	ArturoSanchez: Oh... Java    (2A35)
	anonymous1 morphed into Cecil Lynch    (2A36)
	ArturoSanchez: HAL    (2A37)
	ArturoSanchez: On fire!!    (2A38)
	PeterYim: @Adam & Tom - how do you manage performance and scalability ... tell us something about 
	that, please    (2A39)
	SeanBarker: When would we be able to try this out in the UK?    (2A3A)
	ArturoSanchez: Pretty cool guys! Thank you for sharing your system with us!    (2A3B)
	Richard Christian Brown: @Adam & Tom - How have you leveraged available computing power and 
	resources to promote real-time processing and rendering of results?    (2A3C)
	Richard Christian Brown: Right on!    (2A3D)
	Richard Christian Brown: What portions of processing are done on the device?    (2A3E)
	Richard Christian Brown: Or more specifically, do you utilize the device running the application (be 
	it a MDA, PDA, notebook, etc...) to do naturally language processing and disambiguation?    (2A3F)
	PeterYim: Tom: "Big Think, Small Screen"    (2A3G)
	Richard Christian Brown: nice try    (2A3H)
	JoelBender: (no iPod Touch support , I'll try this on my iPhone later )    (2A3I)
	anonymous2 morphed into BernardUlozas    (2A3J)
	ArturoSanchez: Question: what main security concerns did you identify while developing the 
	application and how did you address them?    (2A3K)
	BrandNiemann: I have used this for several weeks now and it has worked very well. Thanks, Brand    (2A3L)
	Tejas Lagvankar: I'm waiting for the Android App !    (2A3M)
	GaryBergCross: Do you think that it will difficult to maintain your preferences for various services 
	as they change or time? Say Yelp is preferred for reviews but then adds better info for reservations 
	and some other service starts to have better reviews.    (2A3N)
	TomGruber and AdamCheyer: For other devices, please stay tuned...    (2A3O)
	EvanWallace: Thanks. I want this.    (2A3P)
	michael: what is the business model?    (2A3Q)
	Richard Christian Brown: gone are the days of viral marketing ... well so to speak    (2A3R)
	John McGrath: Very informative. Most interested to understand how search engine 
	platforms can best interface to the closud to support service providers like Siri. Seems a more 
	robust dialog(vs query) interpretor stand will be required in the long run.    (2A3S)
	Ali Hashemi: thanks all    (2A3T)
	ArturoSanchez: Great session!    (2A3U)
	TomGruber and AdamCheyer: Thanks    (2A3V)
	PeterYim: Thanks everyone!    (2A3W)
	PeterYim: -- session ended 12:12pm PST --    (2A3X)
    -- end of chat session --    (29NQ)
    Almost all the questions raised on the chat were addressed by our speakers verbally during Q&A segment of the session.
    Check out the audio recording for the responses.    (2A4F)

Audio Recording of this Session    (29NU)

For the record ...    (29O2)

How To Join (while the session is in progress)    (29O3)

Conference Call Details    (29LX)

Attendees:    (29MW)