Barbara Grosz, Higgins Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and dean of science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, has been working to develop collaborative human-computer interfaces: 'We're aiming to have computer systems be team players, acting collaboratively to help us accomplish our goals. For almost any task on which you'd like a computer to help, you'd rather have it be your partner, not an (unthinking) servant. Staff photo by Jon Chase |
AI evolution: From tool to partnerBarbara Grosz is working on making computers co-workers, not servantsJanuary 31, 2002If your computer can't find the file you request, it sends up a dialog box: "File Not Found." It even makes you click "OK" before you can continue with your work. Then, if you want it to try again, you have to tell the computer which drive, folder, and sub-folder the file is in. Harvard researcher Barbara Grosz would like the computer to respond differently: "File not found, searching other directories" -- and without putting a dialog box in the middle of your work, either. That way you know the file isn't where you thought it was, but you can also rest assured that the computer is looking in other places. Wouldn't that be helpful? Making computers into helpful assistants instead of unthinking machines is the research focus of Grosz, who is Higgins Professor of the Natural Sciences in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences and dean of science at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. |
