Phase 1, Post 5: Grappling with Technology

The technology that I have been grappling with and looking to examine more is natural language processing.  It was part of the product pivot in my internship last semester.  We were aiming to create an application that would act as a total assistant in meetings, automating as many processes as possible to ensure that all you have to worry about while executing your meeting is executing your meeting.  This is what I see as the power of natural language processing.  Computers know how to calculate and simulate and compile but what we need is for technology to understand how to do those without translation on the part of the user.

 A software we commonly used was otter.ai, an artificial intelligence program that would use natural language processing to transcribe your audio recorded meetings.  We used this because it removed the need for note taking, it removed the disheartening moments of losing that idea because no one can remember it.  Because computers can compute faster than we can - now all we need is for them to speak our language.

 An interesting use of this technology is the game, AI Dungeon.  AI Dungeon is a call back to the classic MUDs, the multi-user dungeons that were online text adventures.  They were the first roleplaying games, allowing you to immerse yourself in a new character in a different world.  What makes AI Dungeon so cool is that it will create a new story every time you play, as well as take in your natural responses as world-building and plot-advancing.  It is amazing how this technology can be used to automate creativity.  Of course, it is not done perfectly, but it marks the beginning of incredible advancement.

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