Software that knows the risks

Imagine that you could tell your phone that you want to drive from your house in Boston to a hotel in upstate New York, that you want to stop for lunch at an Applebee's at about 12:30, and that you don't want the trip to take more than four hours. Then imagine that your phone tells you that you have only a 66 percent chance of meeting those criteria -- but that if you can wait until 1:00 for lunch, or if you're willing to eat at TGI Friday's instead, it can get that probability up to 99 percent. That kind of application is the goal of Brian Williams' group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory -- although the same underlying framework has led to software that both NASA and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have used to plan missions. At the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) this month, researchers in Williams' group will present algorithms that represent significant steps toward what Williams describes as "a better Siri" -- the user-assistance application found in Apple products. But they would be just as useful for any planning task -- say, scheduling flights or bus routes.