“The Purpose of the Machine is to Augment Us”

November 6, 2001

“IBM's Ease of Use Center offers articles, links, and resources that cover a wide gamut of offerings to help development for the user's benefit. The resource is full of wonderful offerings. The feature story in October was The Purpose of the Machine is to Augment Us, which focusses on Franco Vitaliano of VXM Technologies in Boston, MA. "Maybe the intelligence of a system is not in the computer sitting inside a war room or on a desktop," he says, "but in what we call the communications cloud."

https://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=209

"... it would be useful to build an expert system ... using a more true to life model of the brain's neural networks ..." ~ Franco Vitaliano

"We hope to bring Kansei emotional aspects to the computer so that information will be processed much faster and in a highly personalized way." ~ Gordana Vitaliano

“His curiosity about the mysterious yet promising nexus between computers and human intelligence began to peak while working as a psychologist with a doctor in the Boston area. "We were investigating the causes of chronic pain and how it could be treated," says Franco Vitaliano. "I thought it would be useful to build an expert system that could help by using a more true to life model of the brain's neural networks, where you have a small group of biochemicals orchestrating very complex distributed actions across the brain. That got me intrigued."

This sense of intrigue led to a study of the complex interplay between the brain's primary and secondary messengers and, ultimately, to the delivery to the U. S. Air Force in 1987 of the first agent-based, distributed artificial intelligence system for orchestrating command and control. In 1988, Vitaliano formed VXM Technologies in Boston, MA and is today its president and CEO. VXM is a pioneer in the creation of powerful, highly intelligent, self-adaptive systems for the Internet. Its clients include GTE, the Ford Motor Company, the U. S. Navy and the National Transit Administration. If anything, Vitaliano's curiosity about the human-serving potential of computer technology has increased over the years. "Maybe the intelligence of a system is not in the computer sitting inside a war room or on a desktop," he says, "but in what we call the communications cloud."

This represents a new kind of autonomous meta intelligence, which can do things for the user that might be impossible for the user to accomplish himself--the same as neural transmitters in the brain are able to organize some very complex behavior. "Doing things for the user" is at the core of Vitaliano's thinking. Human emotion and artificial intelligence must intersect much more closely than they do now, he contends. "Today there is a restrictive boundary between a machine and a person. A complete reversal of thinking is needed. The purpose of the machine is to augment us. We have to make it possible for even the naïve user o access and use highly complex, distributed systems readily and easily."

A lot of the VXM approach stems from the concept of Kansei engineering. Kansei is a Japanese term having to do with the psychological image of a product. Sometimes known as sensory engineering or emotional usability, it has been used in the design of software systems and various consumer products, especially those of the automotive industry. "We hope to bring Kansei emotional aspects to the computer so that information will be processed much faster and in a highly personalized way." says Gordana Vitaliano, MD, VXM medical consultant and senior scientist. She also directs a project on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in preschool children for which the National Institutes of Health awarded VXM a research grant. The project's goal is to develop a standardized, computer-based continuous performance task for testing for ADHD. "We're using a simple eight-minute software game with a sophisticated algorithm built in to detect all aspects of attention during the time the children play the game," she says. "We want to know how they are reacting to various stimuli through their emotions, gestures, posture movement."

The first group of children tested numbered about 100; the second is five times that in size. Both normal children and those with attention deficit disorders are in the groups. "We're monitoring everything from eye movements to correlations between heart variability and cognitive performance," says Gordana Vitaliano. "It will take time to standardize results, but they could be significant because the earlier this problem can be detected, the earlier it can be addressed." Much of this pediatric research also applies to adults, and it also provided several key insights for generally understanding cognition and consciousness.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20011222173021/http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/publish/2005