Autopilot

Today's Google Verarschung is more subtle than the one a few years back, but still a lot of fun:

Does Autopilot work for Gmail chat too?

Yes. Chat was actually simpler to build, given the natural language headway made by Joseph Weizenbaum's ELIZA. While many claim ELIZA oft times passed the Turing test, Gmail Autopilot passes with 99.9% accuracy due to the inclusion of human-like qualities such as compassion and wisdom and CADIE's related ability to calibrate to match your chat style.

What happens if a sender and recipient both have Autopilot on?

Two Gmail accounts can happily converse with each other for up to three messages each. Beyond that, our experiments have shown a significant decline in the quality ranking of Autopilot's responses and further messages may commit you to dinner parties or baby namings in which you have no interest.

I bet more than a few people click on the home page with the hope of actually having a means to respond to messages robotically.

Addendum: The home page created by the artificial intelligence entity CADIE mentioned in the Google press release is a delight.

The Apex of Reflex Without Reflection?

I continue to be fascinated and at times repulsed by the uses to which Twitter is put. I know I'm probably making a specious distinction when I complain about the degree to which Twitter and Facebook updates short-circuit reflection while mourning the decline in personal blogging of a wordy sort at sites like Live Journal, but I can't help myself. Take this Tweet from this morning, for example:

I just burned my tongue! Making some soup, and burned it while tasting. What a day.

My first thought was that it was an April Fool's provocation. But given the frequency with which this particular person posts -- and often about the need to post more frequently -- I am pretty sure that it was sincerely intended. Perhaps "intended" is too strong a word, though, or insufficiently intended. To repurpose one of my favorite analogies, most Twitter content is analogous to the category of manslaughter, an action undertaken on the spur of the moment without deliberation, rather than first degree murder. "I just burned my tongue!" is only slightly more pre-meditated than the exclamation one spits out upon burning it. I think I'll make an update playing off that convergence: "I just posted to Twitter!"