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Will we all soon be slave to artificial intelligences that will run our lives for us?
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Robin Labs, creator of the personal assistant application and platform is offering an end-to-end white-label solution that combines both Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and sophisticated Natural Language Understanding (NLU). The company plans to go head to head with Google, specifically in the field of voice recognition and communication system for Android devices for use in cars.
Their Virtual Personal Assistance technology is based on a combination of natural language understanding, speech recognition and a personalized user knowledge base. With this technology, users can use their Assistant to answer questions and complete tasks related to calendar management and reminders, messaging, local search, reservations, navigation and more, either with voice or free text input.
If you saw last year’s Oscar nominated film Her, which starred Scarlett Johansson and Joaquin Phoenix, then you know that we will soon be able to communicate with our computers and mobile devices just like on Star Trek. In that film, Johansson never appeared on camera as she was only the sultry voice of Samantha, Phoenix’s Siri like artificial intelligence assistant.
While we may be years away from having the technology depicted in Her, every year we get a bit closer.
More and more vehicles today are offering voice operated systems to assist motorists in tasks such as finding directions through GPS. Soon all cars will have some sort of voice activated system installed which will allow drivers to actually converse with some form of operating system.
This is where Robin Labs comes in.
The company’s CEO Ilya Eckstein stated, “Robin Labs’ new combined platform promotes the company to a unique position in the industry. It is a strategic move aimed to secure independence for ourselves and our partners, especially those in the connected car market, who appreciate the flexibility and the data security that our solution provides.”
Robin states that, “Siri can only support a narrow set of commands and actions, and now both consumers and businesses are yearning for more. It’s time for the next disruptive cycle. Enter Robin.”
It asserts that its approach differs fundamentally from existing techniques. Today’s industry practices, it maintains, pragmatically narrow down the problem to create highly specialized solutions. But those solutions do not scale and do not work once original assumptions change.
The company began with a holistic model of language semantics, a unified methodology with reusable building blocks can be applied to any vertical, and dramatically speeds up the creation of individual-yet-interconnected assistants. Unlike Siri, they say, their platform is open, expandable and can be taught new concepts and phrases in a straightforward manner.
The Robin app is currently available free for Android, but the company does not yet have an Apple compatible one.
Robin Labs, formerly called Magnifis, is based in Palo Alto California and has raised $700, 000 in investments to date from Arkady Borkovsky, Esther Dyson and Altair.
Ilya Eckstein co-founded the company. He is a specialist in brain mapping, data mining, machine learning, NLP, computer graphics & geometry, navigation & maps, computer vision and robotics. Eckstein has authored a number of publications and patents and holds a graduate degrees in Computer Science from USC and Israel’s Technion.
