Remarkablogger

Continued from Part 2.

Once we reach the point of the CUI (Conversational User Interface), interacting with computers will more and more like interacting with intelligent beings. Computers will seem to be more personable and will seem to possess intelligence long before they actually reach a point where they could seriously be considered as autonomous self-aware entities. When those that can afford it move to a NUI (Neurological User Interface), they will be interacting not only conversationally with powerful software agents, but also visually or in any other way in which the NUI can interface with the human neurological system. Interacting with software agents that possess the capability to nearly match human beings will create profound complications and possibilities for us.

Here are some possibilities:

• Sophisticated therapy agents endorsed and licensed by governing organizations in the mental health fields, that would be used by those that could afford them and by criminal rehabilitation services (particularly for sexual crimes).
• “Guardian Angel” agents that are ever-present in the lives of the highly religious (if their religion doesn’t forbid the NUI implants). This would be a human-made fulfilment of the idea that “God is watching.” Guardian Angels would offer religious-based counsel in a fashion similar to the therapy agents mentioned above. They could be designed to look “Biblical” so that it might actually be Jesus you’re talking to, they may be more simply angelic in glowing white robes and beatific faces, or they could appear as a friendly but definitely more human religious leader.
• Nearly all employees providing customer service of any kind in nearly any sort of enterprise would be replaced by software agents leased from firms that specialize in the programming and creation of such agents. Just as people will lease computational power “by the byte” in the future, so too are computer cycles leased and applied where they’re needed in a business or other organization.
• Telepresense of actual persons to facilitate communications or games. In other words, a truly virtual meeting.
• Agents which are a form of another kind of agent we’re already familiar with in the present day: secret agents. That is, agents programmed with an intent to deceive, influence, and gather intelligence. These would be illegal but would proliferate under the employ of Intelligence agencies and criminal organizations (those that are deemed criminal by the powers that be at the time).

And of course the applications for intelligent software agents could go on. That last one is—and rightly so—highly disturbing, and worthy of its own post in the near future.

Continued in Part 4.

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