SILVIA Conversational AI Platform

This is a consumer-downloadable chatbot of sorts. There is nothing wrong with this, but setting aside technological differences, of which there are many, Cognitive Code is a provider of a platform and tools for conversational application development. Therefore, Answerpad isn't even on our distant radar as a potential competitor for our business.

 

Well I dunno, maybe your program is state of the art. maybe your program can carry out amazing feats of reasoning and intelligence, but from what I saw in your demos I see a very basic chatbot with a pleasant frontend.

But let's not get into a discussion about AI. It doesn't matter what your product is,, if you make wild claims then you're always going to compel assholes like me to dispel them

The best thing to do is to not treat people like they're idiots and let them decide for themselves how worthwhile and useful your product is. If your product really is great then there should be no need for you to blow your own trumpet, your customers will do that for you.


Summary: Be honest, be cool..

..and be loved.

<3

 

I can't imagine where, in any of my communications, that I have treated anyone like an idiot. I have been extremely careful to be respectful on this forum, even of opinions with which I disagree, such as yours.

Cognitive Code is a business. As such, a certain amount of marketing and dissemination of information about our platform is necessary to further our business.

The Field of Dreams, "If you build it, they will come.", approach is not viable for us. If nobody knows about our product and what it does, who will buy it, and thereby support our business?

So a certain amount of "blowing our own trumpet" is necessary, if nothing else, to get the information out there about what our product is about.

If because of this, I am not "honest" or "cool", then there is nothing I can say that will convince you otherwise.

 

Do you have any plans to release interactive demo? Also it would be nice to see what exactly the process of creating "brain" entails.

 

Originally this thread was intended to gauge overall interest in a "SILVIA for Unity" commercial product for developers. It is looking good so far in that regard.

So, as we get closer to an official release of such a product, we will make interactive demos available, as well as releasing the API spec and other documentation so developers can get a good preview.

 

Can't wait to check those demos out! I'll be alert!

 

Any updates on this technology? Thanks.

 

This is like Eliza on steroids, very impressive.

What would happen if you sat two SILVA instances next to each other, and had them converse with each other?

 

this thing has been dormant for a few months now, hmmm...

 

We had licensed the tech. We waited for the integration with Unity which was the reason we bought the license. At this point he has had difficulty with the integration of the Editor into Unity as well as the speech to text and text to speech on the OS X platform. We are disappointed but as developers we understand the situation. Sometimes the code think-thru looks quite viable but then you hit a wall with some function or integrating a library and the timeline for deadline goes down the tubes.On other issues, the API was written in Lua and it was expected for us to translate the Lua to C#. Unfortunately he was asking our writer basically to learn C# and then translate Lua into that syntax. This was not possible for our writer as he had enough of a time understanding C#. I am a JS guy and very busy with the artwork, UV mapping, coding, testing and etc etc to take the time I do not have to do this. The SILVIA editor itself was amusing and we made quite comedian of her prior to a bug causing loss of two months of input data.

I feel that with proper tech support and documentation this tool is awesome but as it is it is not quite ready for prime time in Unity. The moment it is we will begin using it again.

HTH
BTH

 

Not to get into too much detail, but ...

We do not yet have firm time frames for shipping the official SILVIA for Unity product yet. However, we do have some customers now shipping applications using the our SILVIA for Unity runtime.

Regarding hitting a wall with our development, this is not the case, at least in a technological sense. To date, we have had limited resources, which we have had to apply to both our B2B markets, and to development of SILVIA for Unity. This situation is changing shortly, and I will have more people on the SILVIA for Unity product.

Internally, we were indeed concerned about the risks of letting an early version of the runtime out the door. However, we went ahead and did so on a limited basis. Since then, there have been some outstanding customer successes with the SILVIA for Unity runtime. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case here, and I am sorry for that.

My offer made in my last email to you still stands: we will offer you a full refund.

 

Can you point us to anything done in Unity that uses SILVIA?

 

We have a customer/partner developing and selling products using SILVIA for Unity. Unfortunately, we cannot publicize information about these products, as they are mostly for government markets and we are under NDA with the customer not to disclose details about these products.

 

can we give this baby a test-drive somehow?

 

We would be willing to put it in Rogue as an example. I just sent you an email, contact me and we can discuss it further.

 

This approach of intelligence is quite powerfull I have to say.

I'm just a French teacher, although I like to call myself Webosoof (philosopher of the web) and I do like the internet, science and science-fiction, etc.

anyway, this is the very first time I'm seeing anything really convincing in terms of a real Turing test candidate

especially the versatile part of the computed answers is awesome and feels really human - we distillate also answers, don't we ? especially the first time a question comes up.

SILVIA can indeed look for answers just as a secretary IMHO.

I would love to find an online version of the SILVIA UI as soon as possible, because I would like making conversation to her - personification of the AI is needed.

My little question: can the system create its own questionning of the world ?

 

The system is quite capable. You do have to feed it lots of info and responses but setting up those with correct weighting and connecting meaning to other words you have programmed into SILVIA will allow the "brain" to sort through and begin to create "her" own answers. We had alot of comedy and parody inputs and when you asked questions you would get some pretty funny answers. It would cross reference into other topics besides the main gist or what you would think she would pull from the inputs given. I look forward to the Unity module being completed when we will continue using it again. For the moment all our work for the application is inside of Unity, but we did get a few months to get introduced to the system. I believe such is the future of game type applications. I have also heard her on a number of phone calls where the voice routes you to various extensions. Educational and companion type toys would benefit from this as well.

HTH
BTH

 

Will you give free copy of the Silvia for users? I just want to test it, to speak with it. Just for fun not for comercial porpouse

 

Does it utilise machine learning at all?

 

The technology sounds very interesting, looking forward to see more of it


But with all due respect I think you definitely should pull your website again, immediately, until it

1. isn't copy clone on every page, if the link is working at all
2. you get that annoying flash bloat away from anything but the landing page - this is potentially a consequence of 1

so the page no longer yells "hype ware" or "vapor ware" loud enough that it is hearable from miles away already.

Basically you have 2 working links, thats the home and technology (the rest at top is clone, the stuff at bottom not working at all) and technology is just a 10% rephrased version of home ...


Even without knowing the technology my alarm bells are ringing up to a fair degree already at this point due to a technology claiming pretty high B2B licenses yet having a page that is basically on the level of a 2 person garage team licensing a joomla template from RocketTheme so nothing remotely in the range and class of what you claim to offer technology wise.
In this state you are hurting yourself significantly and I doubt you are gaining any real developer interest and might even lose their trust, leaving with those who 'would like to have it' but can never afford to have it and it would be better to offer a simplified version of just the landing page without the flash bloat until you have the real page ready and working.

 

It's very exciting but seeing is believing!

 

The Fora.tv lecture/speech about SILVIA is from 2008. That's almost 4 years ago. By now, I would expect to see some easily accessibly demo of what it can do. Maybe you guys and Euclideon should join up!

 

Haha Euclideon.. biggest IT hoax of the 21st century.

 

Hello CogCode

I checked out your website and would like to get in touch with you. Can you provide me with your contact email or an phone number?
All the best

Louis

 

You're in the wrong thread, but yeah so far this silvia thing is having the same attitude than they have at euclideon!

 

Not to necro this thread but the work on SILVIA continues:

• Version 3 of SILVIA Studio is nearing release, now supports Mac and Windows
• We're finishing up a ton of new examples and tools for developers and users to quickly import their data into a SILVIA Brain and make Behaviors out of it
• Releasing a tutorial series on setting up SILVIA Brain Files and scripting with them in the new Unity 2022 environment. Several are already up at our YouTube page:
  
  
• New embedded Compiler. Can run AOT or JIT. Still supports Windows/Mac/iOS/Droid/Linux 99% Likely/Probably most other platforms Unity can build to.
  
• Tons of new features for speeding up workflow, totally reworked UI.
• Automatic semantic filters for numbers to cut down on scripting.
• Expanded API and new features to manage Timed Functions, new text conversion tools to allow for context-specific verbal formatting depending on subjects.
• Many other things but I'll save the full rundown for when I get the other login.

Will follow up.
Thanks much.

- Jason

 

Alright, we're live again.

 

Interesting.
Coming back after over decade

So what happened over a decade gap?

What has changed since then?

Why showcasing for Unity devs old tech voice synthesised, while on the website you showcase something much more real to human voice?

Can Unity use better voice quality?

What are different voices that API can support?

Can you share more details about "portability"?

Do users need Internet connection to the server?

What server stores?

Is server to be on the remote network, or on the device, or an application?

Can you please share more details?

Also, you probably want to refractor first page, with more details.

 

Carrying the project forward, yes.

Regarding the last decade, the team licensed the SILVIA AI to a defense contractor and they've got a $100 Million business unit that uses SILVIA as the nervous system for their operations, training, simulations, etc. They're happy.

Bearing this in mind, we felt that it would just as soon be a great tool for easing friction in applications, augmenting games with situationally-aware AI Player Characters [aka AIPC's], and we've added a new layer to the Behaviors that allows non-keyframed motion synthesis so you can animate SILVIA-driven character rigs in 3D along with the interactive exchanges.

What changed? The tech itself has always been a winner, although I'm not the fellow who started this thread.

We hired a team to re-envision and take things to 3.0 at the beginning of this year. There have been several breakthroughs and a couple of temporary setbacks.

You asked about Voice, to wit:

Since we were adding support for SILVIA Studio to run on OSX, we decided to deprecate the legacy 32-bit-only/Windows-only SILVIA 2.0 TTS (we did like the voice but it couldn't be re-compiled for 64-bit which started causing issues on AMD processors as time marched on).

As a base default, we implemented a cross-platform native TTS solution that can use device-native language packs for PC/Mac/iOS/Droid, and also supports other e-Speak / Klattersynth / MaryTTS voices. See RT-Voice Pro on the Asset Store. We felt it a good middle ground for use with our Studio application, rather than shoehorning users into a particular sales funnel when there are many TTS choices available.

SILVIA has a number of output stacks, the Text and Verbal out can be sent to any on-device TTS or TTS service you desire. You could send it to AWS or Azure or Google as well, but we decided to remove the platform stipulations and go with 'universal'.

Meanwhile, we're working on a next gen voice synth to obviate all of those. We're in R&D on it right now but it's taking shape. We're a couple months out from it, it'll be a Unity-Native TTS synth, avoiding all of the flying sandcastle dependency mirages you have to deal with when setting up Python-based TTS. It will be trainable, parameterized so you can actually modify the subtler aspects of voices / blend them, and will run on-device.

So, to your question, yes, Unity can "use better voice quality".

Regarding Portability, what we mean is that the SILVIA Core and its intent engine are designed to run completely on the device. SILVIA's C# script stack allows you to engage all of the same resources you'd pull into your typical Unity projects, so you can make use of the internet, but the actual SILVIA Core doesn't need it.

Cognitive Code does not store your data. SILVIA does not send your data anywhere unless you specifically program it to. SILVIA can embed in existing applications and make use of your data sets and whatever language/terms of art/lingo/.NET libraries/2D & 3D assets etc. you want to control/present/fetch/manage/report/monitor.

The SILVIA Core DLL is only about a Megabyte, the Brain Files encode all of the AI's words/concepts, their relations to each other, all of the Behaviors including expected language/text in and out, flags/tags/data, the Script contents for the Brain File, and all of the tag presets for character animation and application control. File size is small.

The results of our intent inference benchmarks from 2018/2019 are better than Siri or Watson or Alexa by about a point or a point and a half. This remains true today, and pound for pound, SILVIA gets it done with less data needed.

Our company's patents on intent are referenced multiple times in various patent documents Google has submitted, in short: They cite us, not the other way around.

C-Level management is working on a major website revamp currently after we've been workshopping messaging and aims going forward this year. I've been seeing some lovely screenshots in the last few days.

Anyway thanks very much for all your questions. Let me know if I can answer anything else.

All the best to you.

 

Interesting project! Thanks for the detailed update, I had the same questions as to the decade lapse between the original post.

 

Thank you fo replies and explanations @CognitiveCode. Appreciate.

It does sounds great. And I love what I hear, since I am gear fan of such tech in general.

Yet my apology, for me being sceptical and chalanging yor product, but I need to stay quite reserved to such brave claims for time being. I.e. Better than Alexa, or Sir. Voice AI is nothing new, nor unfamiliar to me. But yet, I have never heard before about this product. Specially if supposidly alwayst to be said "success". And yet nothing heard in Unity for over decade. Then showcasing us old tech. Sorry, but it doesn't make sense to me.

Can you show us citetions of this product by other large techs? I am very ciourious.

I can find only handful references past year, when searching for SILVIA IA, or relevant. Found link on blizzard showcase. However, the YT chanel is nearly empty, nor it has any popularity.

https://m.youtube.com/@cognitivecode5465

Then a silence beyond for over the decade in the Internet. Not only Unity forum.

It is like this software tech nearly doesn't exists ... and yet it claims to completely opposite. So what I am missing?