Again, I think you missed the point of the demonstration. Microsoft isn't selling a general artificial intelligence solution, but perhaps a facial recognition and voice recognition intelligence. Even that is yet to be seen.

Of course, I would expect what Milo could understand would be limited, at best recognising trigger words such as "homework". Did the lady in the movie have to walk while Milo was walking? Could she ask to play basketball instead? Of course, Milo would have to be "trained" to understand what basketball even is, and I bet that "training" is not on a neural network, but just old fashion hard-coded event "ai".

The main thing to take away is that Milo could recognise "homework", "play a game", "drawing on paper" and apparently be able to read the emotion off the persons voice and face. Microsoft isn't selling skynet.

Yes, but if the AI is fake, what makes you believe that the facial/voice recognization is real ? They could have been playing a pre-recorded video on the TV and hired an actress, for all I know.. Now that's doesn't mean the technology doesn't work, but I tend to take this kind of videos more like a "our aim is to achieve something like that one day" rather than "that's what we can do today".. Remember Killzone2 ?

Y.

Quote: Original post by GMuser
Again, I think you missed the point of the demonstration. Microsoft isn't selling a general artificial intelligence solution, but perhaps a facial recognition and voice recognition intelligence. Even that is yet to be seen.

Of course, I would expect what Milo could understand would be limited, at best recognising trigger words such as "homework". Did the lady in the movie have to walk while Milo was walking? Could she ask to play basketball instead? Of course, Milo would have to be "trained" to understand what basketball even is, and I bet that "training" is not on a neural network, but just old fashion hard-coded event "ai".

The main thing to take away is that Milo could recognise "homework", "play a game", "drawing on paper" and apparently be able to read the emotion off the persons voice and face. Microsoft isn't selling skynet.

As far as I know Microsoft didn't develop Milo, Lionhead did. And Peter Molyneux was in fact making much bigger claims than face and voice recognition. At least that's how I interpreted his words.

Well, Lionhead are an MS studio; one they don't have much of a hand in but one all the same.

Quote: Original post by Ysaneya
Yes, but if the AI is fake, what makes you believe that the facial/voice recognization is real ?

exactly right, based on the evidence logically Ild/yould have to distrust all the video.

My favorite moments of the Natal demonstration/trailer:
- "Natal allows the avatar to mimic my movement" while this is on the screen:

- The scanning of the skateboard, then it appearing on screen perfectly without the hands holding the skateboard up
- The girl having her sweater somehow removed to show what she would look like in a dress

In general when a product requires this much BS to get noticed, I generally disregard it.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10254684-1.html?tag=mncol;title

Quote: The demo video was impressive, but obviously shot in a tightly controlled environment with clearly scripted responses. Talking to several people who got a chance to try out talking to Milo in person behind closed doors, the responses were uniformly disappointed, describing the supposedly realistic Milo similar to a Tamagotchi virtual pet, with only very basic interactivity.

I also see sony have blatantly ripped off the wii's controller, but even that which must be well understood technology by now wont be available for a year.

in short we'll be seeing a lot of these hardware 'innovations' again at next years E3

I wish companies (in particular Microsoft with something as ambitious as Natal) would just wait until the next console generation to launch stuff like this rather than trying to force it into the middle of the current generation.

Assuming the technology works, I'm sure we'll see some innovative uses of the technology--thoughts that immediately come to mind are fighting or martial arts games, fitness games, maybe a martial arts trainer, and sports games--but it's probably largely going to be passed over by the majority of developers since it is, no matter how advanced it might be, a peripheral that is being introduced years after the platform launched and just as developers are probably getting a really strong grasp on the current hardware.

Like NickGravelyn pointed out, Natal could be potentially good for all gamers and all games. I could easily imagine a hybrid control scheme involving an ordinary Xbox 360 gamepad for standard controls such as movement and Natal for special motion based controls, such as melee moves. Of course, it remains to be seen if this would actually turn out any more effective than such hybrid games that are already on the Wii, but due to Natal's more sophisticated motion tracking I'd say it has a chance at improving on the formula.

In general, except for a few niche games (that could nevertheless have huge sales potential, as Wii Sports/Wii Fit/etc. have demonstrated), I fear most games will not take advantage of Natal even though they could because this is simply a very bad time to introduce a fundamentally different control mechanic.

They should have continued developing and perfecting the technology, releasing it as a standard part of the next Xbox along with ordinary controllers.

The thing is there WILL be companies which use it, if only to compliment other systems, heck the game I'm working on at work has the potential to be a release title for it when it comes out.

It's all well and good saying 'wait', however we are still a little while from a new console release (maybe longer than we would have been with the economy dropping the way it has) AND if you released a console tomorrow with this tech with it then you are still looking at a lead time before anyone makes use of it 'properly' while everyone learns to work with it and design with it in mind. So, your brand new console would effectively have a useless device for the first say 6 to 10 months of its life cycle, followed by a few month of 'gimmick' uses before, maybe 18months down the line, REAL games which use it properly start appearing. That setup makes no sense either.

I suspect it will be standard in the next generation, it'll also be standard with XB360s sold at/after it's release. The real question is how much will it cost to buy stand-alone and what games will appear, because if Guitar Hero, Rock Band and the Wii have taugh us anything its that people WILL buy extra things if they are priced right and have the games to go with it.

I think the Milo video is a horrible example of Natal. What Natal is is basically a system for recognizing complete human figures / objects complete with their orientation and pose, as well as facial and vocal recognition. What Milo shows is some life-like AI that can dynamically react to anything you do and have a conversation with you. When you think about the, the two really have little to do with one another, at least in the video shown.

That being said, I am actually quite excited about Natal, if it takes off it would really be a revolutionary tech. If not for video games, then for general computer usage. Check this out:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/live/projectnatal/

being able to do stuff like browse web, look through clothes / movies or even navigating your whole operating system with actual, accurate hand motions would be absolutely amazing. Cue in Minority Report esque tech.