The Q-AI Expert™ Architecture

Blue Oak is offering licenses for a new technology architecture that is a really easy way for organizations to provide Star Trek™* like computer searches and other services for their network customers and a radical new form of structured Instant Messaging.

While many people would like to have computers that could talk, or at least be smarter than those that are currently available, real computers do not offer the features of the advanced models we see on science fiction TV shows. In fact, it is not even possible for computers to be conscious like real life-forms. However, there are ways for computer systems and networks to simulate some aspects of consciousness, just as humanoid robots can mimic some aspects of human form and behavior. You can think of "virtual consciousness™" as a new kind of virtual reality. Moreover, virtual consciousness can be created using current technology.

Executive Summary

The basic idea behind this new technology is really quite simple: Create a network that is a HYBRID system of machines and people (people who play an anonymous, but active role as experts in processing user requests). The machines in the system contain a layer of client/server software that does the structured Instant Messaging interfacing with users. The instant messaging is "structured" because keeps track of interchanges and communication threads between users and experts, as well as doing standard, state of the art Internet searches, and/or performs other services for them. (This as opposed to the more common instant messaging provided by many ISP's.)

Above the first layer of software, there is a second layer of simple, off-the-shelf expert system type of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software that deals with the easy requests that users make for whatever they are trying to find, but that the first layer state of the art search algorithms need help to find results for. In other words, the requests the first layer applications cannot handle get escalated to the expert system AI layer. This second layer of software also masks the people in the system from the users (like the "curtain" in Wizard of OZ). The top layer in the hybrid system is live human experts, experts who manually process users' requests escalated to them by the AI layer. These human expert processors process the escalated requests of users by role playing AI personas. (This design is necessary since no one has yet been able to engineer a real AI system with the kind of common sense capabilities needed to satisfy user requests.)

The net effect is a futuristic system that simulates an advanced, Star Trek like AI computer system (as far as the users are concerned), one that has application in a number of areas.

The Q-AI Expert architecture is technology that can be implemented simply and immediately. No multimillion dollar AI applications that take years to develop are required. All you need is existing, state of the art network software, simple off-the-shelf expert system software, and as many human, "Brow-Top" processors as you can afford to install, processors that are already connected to the Internet all over the world. (To the best of our knowledge, the term "BrowTop" was coined by Dr. Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute.)

Additional Information

Here are some other examples of state of the art automatic services Q-AI Expert technology could improve:

Consider the following scenario: Remember what happened the last time you had a problem with your telephone, DSL line, computer, or a software application. Perhaps you tried to contact the manufacturer to seek the help of an expert. What you probably ran into was a wall of unresponsive, automatic, technological systems that frustrated your search for assistance. If you persisted long enough, you may have actually reached a live human being, however, chances are that person was not an expert and therefore was unable to help you solve your problem. In the end, the experience probably left you feeling frustrated, angry, and unhappy, and left the manufacturer of the product with a dissatisfied customer.

Or consider a network shopping scenario: There are millions of people seeking information or services over private computer networks that may be internal to a business or organization and over the Internet, but often these people are not finding what they need because most network applications and eStore web sites offer only passive tools that require network users to take the initiative to search for what they are looking for. Users must figure out what strategy or approach some webmaster used to organize information, fill out seemingly endless forms that must be filled in again in many cases if an error occurs, and many other similarly frustrating examples of roadblocks that stand between users and what they want. Current Instant Messaging systems offer little help help to users for these problems. Moreover, there is usually no convenient way to ask for help when using most network applications of any type.

• There must be a better way, and there is: Q-AI Expert technology can greatly improve these scenarios by offering a fast escalation through incrementally more complex technological responses, and ultimately provide human expert responses in a timely manner to solve customers' problems, when these troubled customers seek help.

  Here is a typical Internet shopping situation you have probably experienced for yourself that demonstrates one of the scenarios and one of the ways Q-AI Expert can solve it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(NOTE: This is not a real implementation of the Q-AI Expert interface, just a demonstration of its simplest form.)

And while on-line shopping can be frustrating, current state of the art search engines have their own problems. Most are limited to primarily text based searches and are extremely "literal" in what they find. Many kinds of information such as pictures and music are nearly impossible to find because most search engines are not designed look for graphical or sound information directly. While it is true that search engines are getting better, it is questionable if they will ever equal real human intelligence. Some sites may offer human assistance for searches, but having to email and hire an assistant is not what the promise of the Internet is supposed to be: A place you can go to easily use technology to find or purchase what you need.

One reason for this state of affairs is that the objective of computer automation has been to eliminate people from the process of providing what network users are seeking, instead of using proactive human experts as an integral part of the system. The state of the art vision is for network software applications and network robots to automatically satisfy all the needs of users and customers, with the role of people reduced to maintenance and system management, but never actually helping network users directly. These "managers" only interface with users as a last resort in response to an email or a phone call when the automatic system fails to satisfy a user, and the user complains loudly enough. The real goal is for the managers of these automatic systems to have no contact with users at all, if possible. The problem with that is the systematic elimination of people from the system is also the systematic elimination of the commons sense knowledge of the people, the ontological knowledge of the concepts, categories or classification of the objects being referred to by users, as well as all the knowledge about the relationships between the objects, their classes, and the relationships between the classes. In other words, by eliminating people from the equation the entire system is dumbed down to the point that is becomes very difficult to use. In the past few years, this information has become known as Web semantics and is gradually being put back into Web software applications, but only to a very small degree so far. Our technology will do so much faster.

Our solution is to put people back into the software applications, private network systems, and the Internet. This is important for web sites, but even more so for business management systems used within large organizations because it can enable people to tap their organization's hidden resources by using their own experts.

Automatic systems store human intelligence, but they can only activate that stored intelligence in limited ways. The limits are set by what the automatic system's designers anticipated when they designed the system in the first place. These systems have only the bottom two or three layers shown in the following graphic. Q-AI Expert technology avoids having only limited intelligence because it is a hybrid system that adds a fourth layer, so Q-AI Expert technology offers all the advantages of state of the art automatic and Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, plus it contains real, live, human intelligence that is activated when preprogrammed limits are encountered by the system's users.

 

Q-AI Expert is a patent pending technology architecture for an expertise brokering system, plus an interactive interface technology architecture that makes your inventory of resources readily available to all authorized personnel in the following ways for both the Internet and intranet applications:

• First, by presenting active, simulated personalities to users, instead of confusing, passive forms, the system encourages people to use it often.
• For intranets, the Q-AI Expert has access to the index of your business management system or other databases, so it contains much of the information needed to identify and locate resources appropriate to a given task.
• Third, the core technology in this system is designed to broker the expertise of your personnel by leveraging their personal strengths, interests, and career goals. In other words, the technology leverages your staff's own interests and motivation to the benefit of your customers.
• Fourth, you are always in control. Unlike state of the art Artificial Intelligence systems, Q-AI Expert is not intended to replace people with computer subroutines, but rather to better utilize their intelligence as an essential part of the system by making human experts an integral part of its processes. Even when AI is used in conjunction with the latest Augmented Reality (AR) or Instant Messaging systems, if the software cannot provide the help you need, a human expert can.

  The architecture is called "Q-AI" (short for Quasi-AI) because it is not meant to be a stand-alone Artificial Intelligence system, just a limited, practical imitation of one (the Quasi™ interface persona) that uses both simulated and real people to communicate with your network users and provides authorized personnel with whatever they are seeking when and where they need it. The simulated personalties that make the interface work can be as simple as interactive still graphic characters that communicate with graphics and text or as complex as medium complexity AI that uses expert system software and interactive video. When necessary, real people (masked by the intervening simulated personality interface) supply the real, conscious intelligence necessary to make the system work successfully. Unlike with state if the art AI, with Q-AI Expert technology it is ultimately the real intelligence of people that makes it work by adding ordinary human language understanding and human "common sense" to this hybrid system.

  This may seem like an unusual approach, but there is a good reason for it. When most people think of "smarter interfaces" or "intelligent systems," they think of Artificial Intelligence. But useful AI systems only work well for highly constrained problems, they require thousands of man-years to build, and they require very powerful computers systems to run (See the January 2002 issue of Scientific American, page 18, The World in a Box by Lamont Wood, or go to http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00063887-5C1E-1C6D-84A9809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=2 and also see a CNN article from April 11, 2002 at http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/industry/04/11/memome.project.idg/index.html ). And even with all of that, AI systems still cannot replace the conscious intelligence of a single human personality, a personality that has a vast amount of knowledge and skills, can reason using natural human languages. AI systems are simply not yet practical practical, except for special applications.

  While the Internet and existing business networks are practical, some of the interfaces these technologies provide users can be very frustrating to use. Instead of presenting users with cluttered, confusing pages of graphics or passive, hard to understand forms, the Q-AI Expert architecture allows network users to interface with simulated personalities that range in complexity from simple graphic characters to video simulations of real people.

  Moreover, this is an architecture that you customize to your organization's business needs using many of your own existing software applications, such as databases. And, it can be implemented as soon as your Information Technology (IT) team can build you one. It is a practical solution for today.

• The Q-AI Expertise Brokering Solution

  Q-AI Expert architecture can satisfy your customers by helping them feel like they are dealing with a real person instead of an impersonal machine, by locating resources for them, and by brokering the needs of your network users to a wide range of your organization's internal and external experts, experts who can provide what your customers are seeking.

  From the perspective of your customer the network user, Q-AI Expert seems like a highly advanced AI system, because users always deal only with simulated personalities and never see the real people in the system who are masked by the interface software your IT team implements. This enables the system to broker the expertise of your personnel anonymously, like a stockbroker brokers stock for investors as they buy and sell it. Your network users and customers assume they deal with the Quasi persona, not real people who are hidden behind the Q-AI Expert interface.

  People often have valuable information or skills outside their job role, but it may not be appropriate to disclose them, or they may not want to make such facts known to coworkers or customers for corporate political reasons. Q-AI Expert provides a means for these people to provide their expertise anonymously, and on a "just in time" basis, thus providing your organization with a vast new resource. Your own experts and various managers are the human conscious intelligence and common sense in the system that make it work, and what differentiates this technology from state of the art AI technology. The experts, human processors, and managers ensure the system is responsive, user friendly, and operates with in an appropriate manner. The people in the Q-AI Expert architecture are like "the man behind the curtain" in the Wizard of Oz.

  The essence of what differentiates the Q-AI Expert architecture from other systems is that it is designed from the beginning with people as an essential part of its functionality, both to augment its interface and to broker the expertise of its providers to its seekers (as opposed to eliminating people from its central processes like state of the art AI automation systems do). In other words, Q-AI Expert technology is purpose built as a hybrid system that mixes manual human actions and automatic machine actions to perform its central tasks. (Keep in mind, however, that being a hybrid system does not preclude various Internet connected devices such as cell phones, PDAs, car navigation systems, miltitary defense systems, security systems, or even AI systems from being part of the overall system design, now or in the future.)

  There are a number of market areas in addition to business in which Q-AI Expert technology can be useful:

  • For Telephone Answering Systems
  • By Providing Quick Access to Expertise Over Networks
  • Brokering Expertise for Technical Support
  • For Cool New AI Network Games
  • For Defense Applications (including language translation)
  • For Augmented Reality (AR) and structured Instant Messaging Systems

  The following are some of the steps required for your organization to utilize Q-AI Expert technology:

• Your organization's core business processes and personnel information must be documented and stored in a business management system and its index made available to the Q-AI Expertise brokering system (unless you plan to use Q-AI Expert technology for your web site only). We will consult with you to help you plan and implement this documentation process.
• The type and complexity level of personality simulation for the system's interface must be defined and created by your IT team (such as still graphics images and text, interactive video, or expert system) and incorporated by them into the Q-AI Expert architecture as customized for your organization.
• A task analysis must be performed to identify which tasks will be automated, which tasks will be manual, the overall task process flow, who or what will perform each process, and all control issues, such as how failed, low-level automatic tasks will be escalated to the human experts and managers in the system.
• A registration system for expertise seekers and providers must be created to build a database of the experts' expertise and seekers' needs. (Real names and other information is only available to key human managers to maintain the anonymity of the experts, seekers, and other human processors in the system.)
• An automated matching system must be created to identify easy matches between expertise seekers and providers.
• An automated screening system must be created to evaluate all automatic matches based on organizational policies.
• An automated invoice and payment system must be created if the expertise brokering is not a free service.
• The roles of whatever number of human experts, processors, and managers required to operate the system must be defined, along with a work schedule to ensure these people are always available when the system is in operation.
• During testing, the system must undergo a security efficiency evaluations to get baseline measurements and define the state of best practice.
• On a regular basis after the system is up and running, further testing and improvements must be made to reach and maintain the state of best practice.

  It is easy to take advantage of Q-AI Expertise brokering architecture. We will consult with you to identify your organization's needs, negotiate a technology license with you, support your webmasters, network application designers, and other IT people to help them create a custom system designed specifically for your organization's needs, and then we will develop training courses to train your staff how to deploy and use it.

  The Q-AI Expert architecture will add a whole new dimension to your organization's business management system and web site. For more details on the architecture, its deployment, market application areas, and licensing, see our Q-AI White Paper page at this site.

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