Today, we saw the release of CCBetty, a sophisticated clone of recently deceased I want Sandy. CCBetty serves as your virtual personal assistant much like Sandy with a few differences. You can just CC any email to CCBetty and "she" tracks it religiously, organizing and filing the information in the email.
If you are in awe at CCBetty (really?), then wait for Laura to be born in this world. Laura is also a virtual assistant like CCbetty but much more smarter than her. Her Harvard Microsoft education gives her the ability to listen to what you talk and do things based on it. Even though CCBetty appears to be a hyper-sensitive family woman, Laura can actually understand your mood and make decisions based on it.
Seattle PI, Seattle’s newspaper on ventillator, reports a story about a recent demo by Microsoft Research.
Built by researchers at Microsoft Corp., Laura appears as a talking
head on a screen. You can speak to her and ask her to handle basic
tasks such as booking appointments for meetings or scheduling flights.
More compelling, however, is Laura’s ability to make sophisticated
decisions about the people in front of her, judging things such as
their attire, whether they seem impatient, their importance and their
preferred times for appointments.
Laura is only in the conceiving stages. We are not even sure if she will see the light of the day. If Microsoft can fit her into tiny mobile phones instead of powerful machines, we will soon be seeing everyone from CEO to Managers to Developers cajoling Laura to keep them efficient in their professional lives.
Well, I guess the reason you’d CC betty is Because we *can’t* talk to Laura.
I wish we could though!
Of course. I just wanted a provocative title for the post :-).