I've always envied pirate ship captains. Not for their looks or for their hooks, but for the funny/witty parrot sidekick they always seemed to have (sometimes even smarter than them, arrr!).
It is therefore time, mateys, to envision and build the next generation of this ornithological concept, as nature could only do so much. Some of the most advanced natural species can be a little fun by imitating a few human words, but that's it. The first thing that people teach them are cursewords, and that has become their most common 'job'. What a waste of evolution!
How about we build a smarter, multifunctional bird? Smarter even than us, aye?
I dont know about you, mateys, but I personally struggle with remembering faces, names and all other things related to other people and I feel very bad about that. BUT, if I had, let's say, an AI-CV-Parrot on my shoulder, I could ask it to:
- learn to respond to vocal commands - essential for everything below
- take pictures of people and things on my behalf - either frontal or by tilting its head on 2 axes + circular motion
- recognize faces in my rolodex/ from previous meetings / that I ask it to memorize (via machine learning/deep learning methods)
- record and imitate certain things that any of the person I meet says that I like (personalized "parrot"-ing!)
- remember all sorts of details of persons I meet that either I or they ask it to memorize (now THAT is smarter than me already!)
- play in different voices different "memories" it records ("Take THAT, nature!")
- whisper in my ear who any person I meet is, and the personal details I probably forgot about her/him and/or some on request, too - now I can remember everything everybody likes!!!! mwuhahahaaaaa!
And, yarr, since we're in European waters, it will also:
- recite its own GDPR policy to whoever asks
- ask permission from anybody and recording its granting before recording anything about them
I could also take it off my shoulder and not only it could take selfies of me and my friends, BUT since knowing who they are it can also automatically send/share them the pics too via THEIR prefferred channel for each.
etc. etc.
The possibilities are endless! Yarr! And I'm building it.
And of course, there is a more serious usage to this other than geeky rolodexing. It could be used by people with memory loss conditions (think Dory from Finding Nemo) or other neurological or physical conditions(brain damage, blindness) as a permanent assistant. Think of the Memento movie. Then think of AI-CV-Parrot. Or 50 First Dates. AI-CV-Parrot.
An AI-CV-Parrot! An AI-CV-Parrot! My kingdom/ship for An AI-CV-Parrot!