Virtual Personal Assistant
Edgar T. Kalns, Ph.D.Entrepreneurial Computer Scientist
Time: Thursday, April 18, 2013, 2:00 pm.
Location: 3105 Engineering Building
Virtual Personal Assistant
Siri is arguably the best-known Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA) available
today, used by millions to enhance their productivity. At SRI, the birthplace
of Siri, we're creating the next-generation VPA that will enable you to have a
much deeper relationship with your assistant. Tomorrow’s VPA
conversations will be about more complex tasks with multiple steps and more
nuance; for example BBVA's Lola (http://www.sri.com/blog/meet-lola-virtual-personal-assistant-banking)
for banking. Other examples of where VPA technology could be leveraged include
exploring healthcare alternatives, planning a vacation, and on-line retail
shopping.
This next wave of VPAs will maintain the context of the conversation for long
periods of time, reason with clarity about what you discuss, provide answers to
your questions, execute tasks for you, and all along the way learn from you and
noticeably improve with use.
Edgar T. Kalns, Ph.D.
Entrepreneurial Computer Scientist
SRI
Edgar Kalns primary focus at SRI is Virtual Personal Assistant – in the areas
of commercialization and continuous innovation of the underlying technology to
solve customer needs. Prior to SRI, Kalns was Co-Founder and VP of Engineering
at Easilydo, Inc. where he led the development of the company’s first product –
a proactive, to-do list agent for the iPhone. Previously, Kalns served as
Senior Director, Professional Services and Network Operations at Nuance
Communications, Inc. In this role, he led the development and support of
hosted, speech-enabled IVR solutions serving numerous Fortune 500 companies.
These solutions scaled to automate millions of customer care calls per day with
extremely high reliability. Kalns received a Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer
Science from Michigan State University and a B.S. Honors degree from the
University of Michigan.
Host:Dr. Matt Mutka