heise meets… What do assistance systems, bots and digital twins have in common?

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1659563056 heise meets what do assistance systems bots and digital twins.jpg

Interfaces between humans and machines are becoming more natural. But we won’t be in the future until my smart home lets the bathwater in.

In a conversation with Sascha Wolter, expert for interfaces between people and machines, we talk about the current and future picture of private and professional assistance systems. “Today’s systems are often based on artificial intelligence (AI), but this is often overestimated and underestimated, because AI is not really intelligent. Everything the systems can do resembles if-then rules in some cases,” Wolter notes.

 


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The AI ​​helps us to get by with a few examples instead of thousands of rules. Based on these examples, the machine then takes over the training of the rules in a kind of black box. However, this black box must be observed to take into account ethical and moral points of view that the machine itself cannot yet recognize. The result is then, for example, a system such as Alexa or navigation in the car. AI is particularly helpful in connection with language. Such language-based systems reduce barriers and allow the user to complete concurrent tasks in parallel.

So far, however, the mood, irony or emotions of the user have not been recognized. “The next step is for the interfaces to behave even more intuitively, and so feel even more natural for us,” says Wolter. A prerequisite for this is that the machine can remember connections and develop the answers itself.

In recent years, the smart home topic has gotten off to a slow start, and now the devices are increasingly finding their way into households. The systems have become more accessible and due to the fall in price, the investment is becoming more and more worthwhile. What previously had to be done laboriously using a cell phone can now be done intuitively using the Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa. As a result, the systems have experienced a noticeable increase in comfort. “Thanks to AI, I can easily control my home, but why doesn’t the system know for itself that whenever I come home, the bath water should be let in automatically. We are still at the beginning here and the systems are really intelligent not yet,” says Sascha.

Bots and chat boots are technically no different from assistance systems in smart homes. I press a button and something happens that can be done verbally, for example, via a “speech-to-text interface”. The spoken word is converted into writing and everything backwards for the answer.

When communicating with a chatbot, it is imperative that people know that they are communicating with a chatbot, i.e. a machine. The user must have the opportunity to adjust to this, also when conducting the conversation. “The machine has not yet had any human qualities when it comes to conducting conversations, and whether and in what form that could ever come is anyone’s guess,” says Sascha.

Let’s get to the topic of digital twins. It enables analog things to be brought into a digital world and, for example, to run simulations. This can be a machine, a workshop, a station or a train. “The digital twin is primarily a way of thinking, the so-called twin thinking, or twinking for short, with which I can look at a project from several sides,” explains Sascha Wolter. I build a virtual mirror image that is simulated or modeled with real data. “Perhaps we will also manage to ensure that bad analogue processes are not converted into bad digital processes. Because, thanks to this abstraction, twinking allows us bold new perspectives and implementation ideas,” Wolter wishes. After all, nothing can be damaged in the digital image.

The common thread of all these topics is certainly the AI, which helps us to simplify a complex set of rules. In the future, the systems could themselves recognize where the needs of the users lie. “The digital twin as a way of thinking helps us to represent the way. And the bot is ultimately a user interface that we use to communicate. But where the development will go in the next few years is uncertain. What is certain, however, is that we Interfaces such as mouse, touchscreen, graphic interfaces and so on should no longer be viewed in isolation,” states Sascha Wolter.

The future task will be how we put everything together in the interests of the user and, for example, combine gestures and language. Just like a human would act naturally. Just point and say “can you turn that on please”. In the near future everything should be multimodal and holistic.

Anyone who would like to learn more about “Voice and chatbots in the corporate environment” will find a video course with Sascha Wolter at the voonze Academy.

“Smart Home: Saving heating costs and energy with smart home technology” will also be published on August 9, 2022 – and c’t – Energie-Tipps is already available.

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