Artificial Intelligence {a review}

First we had the bulky PCs with their keyboards. Things began to move fast when decades later we were introduced to the mouse. Soon enough laptops, sleek monitors with LCD screens followed and have now become a common sight on most desks.As our needs have increased it is not enough to have things at our disposal at the click of a mouse; it has to be easier still. So now freeing our hands will be, a talking and thinking computer-animated face.Doing away with the keyword and mouse and even touch screen, will be new computer generated faces that will be programmed to understand our needs. No longer will we have to book a ticket or withdraw money from the bank by punching keys. Instead the animated-computer face will listen to our verbal instructions and take care of our requirements.However, this computer is not out in the market yet. A team of Australian researchers are working to create it and maybe in the coming decade we'll have a animated computer face greeting us at the ATMs.The team is using technologies like computer animation, speech recognition and computer-generated dialogue to construct the talking, thinking head that emulates face-to-face conversation. It will work on visual clues such as different mouth shapes and face _expression to understand what is being said. Further still, it will be capable of tailoring its communication to the different types of people, by accessing different databases. The team also plans to make this computer learn from its interactions with different people and improve its communication. They even intend to make it capable of giving emotional responses when the need arises.Talk about getting personalised attention!