{"id":188402,"date":"2023-07-11T17:42:40","date_gmt":"2023-07-11T17:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.rm.gfolkdev.net\/?page_id=188402"},"modified":"2023-07-17T01:22:50","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T01:22:50","slug":"designing-agentive-technology-frequently-asked-questions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/books\/designing-agentive-technology-frequently-asked-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Frequently Asked Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

These common questions and their short answers are taken from Christopher Noessel\u2019s book\u00a0Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People<\/em>. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. How do you pronounce \u201cagentive\u201d?<\/strong>
    \n\u201cAgentive\u201d is a once-languishing adjective that is built on the word \u201cagent,\u201d so I pronounce it emphasizing the first syllable, \u201cA-jen-tiv.\u201d I like that this pronunciation points back to its root, which helps people suss out its meaning when they\u2019re hearing it for the first time. I\u2019ve heard people stress the second syllable, as \u201cuh-JEN-tiv,\u201d which rolls off the tongue just fine, but doesn\u2019t do much to help people\u2019s understanding.<\/li>\n
  2. Did you invent this kind of technology?<\/strong>
    \nOh no, far from it. As you\u2019ll read in Chapter 4, \u201cSix Takeaways from the History of Agentive Thinking,\u201d thoughts about machines that take some sort of initiative go all the way back to at least ancient Greece. So, no, I didn\u2019t invent it. I have designed several agentive systems over the past few years, though, and on about my third such project, realized I was seeing some recurring patterns (in the Christopher Alexander sense). I looked for a book on a user-centered approach to this kind of technology, and when I could not find one, decided to write it.<\/li>\n
  3. What\u2019s the most accessible example of agentive technology you can give me?<\/strong>
    \nChapter 1, \u201cThe Thermostat That Evolved,\u201d goes into some detail on one example that is popular in the United States, the Nest Thermo- stat. If you\u2019re not in the U.S., or unfamiliar with that product, imagine an automatic pet feeder. It is not a tool for you to feed your cat. It has tools for you to specify how you want the machine to feed your cat, and the feeder does most of the rest. You will still need to refill it, free food stuck in its rotors, and occasionally customize or pause feeding schedules. These maintenance and customization touchpoints are what distinguishes it from automation and where design plays a major role. To flesh out this singular example, see Appendix B for a list of every other real-world example included in the book.<\/li>\n
  4. I have an agentive project beginning. How can you help me start it out right?<\/strong>
    \nBegin with the first diagram shown in Appendix A, \u201cConsolidated Touchpoints.\u201d It shows common use cases in a rough, chronological order. Think through your product and identify which use cases apply to your project and which don\u2019t. Reference the chapters in Part II for details on the use cases and begin to construct scenarios around them. This should give you a great head start.<\/li>\n
  5. Why didn\u2019t you go into depth about interfaces?<\/strong>
    \nAgentive technology differs primarily in use cases, rather than interfaces, so Part II is dedicated to identifying and describing these. Readers can draw on the existing practices of interaction and inter- face design for best practices around individual touchpoints. The notable exception is the interface by which a user speci es triggers and behaviors. See Chapter 5, \u201cA Modified Frame for Interaction\u201d for an introduction to these concepts, and Chapter 8, \u201cHandling Exceptions,\u201d for an interface pattern called a \u201cConstrained Natural Language Builder,\u201d which you can consider customizing in your agentive interfaces.<\/li>\n
  6. You\u2019re just another cheerleader for the
    \nfuture, blithely bringing artificial intelligence doom down on us all! Wake up, sheeple!<\/strong>
    \nTechnically, that\u2019s not a question, and frankly a little hyperbolic. But I\u2019m still here to help. There\u2019s a distinction to learn in Chapter 2, \u201cFait Accompli: Agentive Tech Is Here,\u201d between narrow artificial intelligence and general artificial intelligence. Once you understand that difference, it becomes easier to understand that, unlike general AI, narrow AI gets safer as it gets smarter. And as you\u2019ll read at the end of Chapter 12, \u201cUtopia, Dystopia, and Cat Videos,\u201d I believe a worldwide body of agentive rules is a useful data set to hand to a general AI if\/when one comes online, to help it understand how humans like to be treated. This is on the good side of the fight.<\/li>\n
  7. Aren\u2019t you that sci-fi interfaces guy?<\/strong>
    \nI am one of them. I keep the blog scifiinterfaces.com, and you may have heard me speaking on the topic, attended a workshop, or been to one of my sci-fi movie nights. Also, Nathan Shedroff and I co- authored\u00a0Make It So: Interaction Design Lessons from Science Fiction<\/em>\u00a0in 2012, which is all about what real-world designers can learn from speculative interfaces. Predictably, sci-fi makes appearances in this book. You\u2019ll see some quick mentions in Chapter 2, and two important mentions in Chapter 13, \u201cYour Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It.\u201d These serve as a telling contrast of sci-fi written with and without agentive concepts. You also can search the #agentive tag on the sci interfaces.com blog to find even more.<\/li>\n
  8. If you could wave your hands and make anything an agent, what would it be?<\/strong>
    \nWell, I must admit that part of the reason I chose Mr. McGregor to
    \nbe the illustrative example is that I grew up in big cities, far from farmsteads, and never got the knack of raising plants. If, like me, you have a brown thumb, but dream of growing your own garden-fresh food, read about Mr. McGregor in sections placed after Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8. My second choice might be an agent on mobile phones that listens in on conversations and does some socially adept fact-checking and frame-checking to encourage skeptical thinking and discourage lies or bullshit, in the H. G. Frankfurt sense.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Back to Designing Agentive Technology<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    These common questions and their short answers are taken from Christopher Noessel\u2019s book\u00a0Designing Agentive Technology: AI That Works for People. You can find longer answers to each in your copy of the book, either printed or digital version. How do you pronounce \u201cagentive\u201d? \u201cAgentive\u201d is a once-languishing adjective that is built on the word \u201cagent,\u201d … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":150108,"featured_media":0,"parent":187323,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/150108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188403,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/188402\/revisions\/188403"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/187323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rosenfeldmedia.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}