Imagine a surveillance system that presents a virtual embodiment of a person on a screen who can react to your behaviour, and alert you to new e-mails, among other technological possibilities.

Basic versions of these so-called avatars already exist. Together with speech and voice recognition systems, they could replace the keyboard and mouse in the future, or at least be in addition to current means of input. One such avatar is Jeremiah; it is a virtual man, which you can download and install for free.

"Jeremiah is a virtual face that attempts to emulate humans in the way it responds to activity," said the creator, Richard Bowden, who refers to Jeremiah as "him", rather than it.

Bowden added that Jerimiah is very childlike, and that "when he sees children running and laughing and waving at him, he smiles at them. If you ignore him, he gets angry. If you leave, he gets sad. And you can also even surprise him."

"I am interested in the interaction, providing the ability of a system to watch what's going on and make decisions based on that," explained Dr Bowden. The team is already working on the next version of surveillance/interaction, which will entail an underwater fish called "Finn the fish", rather than Jerimiah's humanlike face.

What better way to use your computer, than to get a computer to use it for you; let's stockpile the digital complexity!

I'd say, the keybord/mouse will never dissapear. Probably change a bit but not dissapear. Voice input will probably only complement the traditional input methods, like in Star Trek..

If the software surveilance system was ad/spyware free then maybe I would EVEN take it into consideration, but unfortunately, todays AI is not that advanced. Maybe in 20 years. If i had such a thing in my system I would want it to understand what I mean (even if I'm somewhat unclear) and to adapt to my needs/moods etc. It would need to be a pretty powerful AI.

Emulating a human is way beyond anything anyone can do today.

but what i think AI is ...is a totally independence oneself.. just like a ppl, but he is a virtual being, he have no needed to serve u or anyone, if he dun like u, then u can just ignore u , ppl only try to design AI in a way to serve human, Yes i know this is a bussiness , not just science or whatever,

anyway i think AI is not about adapt to yr needs/moods, is AI itself can adapt to its needs/moods, if it will just follow what u need , and follow what u want, then u won't open yrself to let it/him to understand yr moods, coz u will think it is stupid, such as, if u have a stupid friends, i mean stupid enough to hardly understand anything about love, would u like to chat about yr problem about love with him?

and there is no point to be nice to an AI , since u can control its life, if he hate u , then kill him just simply press uninstall..=.=

An AI exist in an artificial universe. You are able to manipulate that universe however you see fit.
For example, a person can not tell the difference between right or wrong it that person doesn't know what right or wrong is. The AI would not have any reason not to serve. It would be the only thing it would know of, thus it would not be able to make that choice in the first place.

I can't really see that ever happening just because voice recognition is about as high as it is going to get because you would have to process and code into the machine the ability to recognize thousands upon thousans of commands and who the heck is going to take the time to program that?

I allready use vioce recognition, i used it to boot, shut down, type, open progs, program, hack, and anything else, browsing is another, i use it for most things. it is easier