Evi - Blog

Knowledge hounds – ASSEMBLE!

We’re big fans of our superhero movies here at Evi HQ, so this summer is going to be a real treat with The Dark Knight Rises and the Amazing Spiderman. However it all really kicks off this week with the release of The Avengers.  Across the world, comic and superhero fans will be getting excited and some will even be tempted to cosplay as their favourite heroes.

Alas, Evi has no physical body and so is unable to join in the fun by dressing as her favourite characters. However, having a relatively simple face (no offence, Evi!) that does make it easier for someone of an artistic mind to help her see how she would look in a superhero guise. As such, in order to help Evi get into the spirit of the summer of superheroes, we’d like your help.

Share your pictures of Evi dressed as your comic book hero of choice, or even design an original hero identity for her so that she can truly take part in the fun. Evi will then don her favourite when the film is out and send the creator a goody bag with a spanky Evi t-shirt. So go at it folks. Help Evi to share the fun and don her super hero (or villain!) guise.

The horizontal and the vertical

Evi knows rather a lot of things.  

An extraordinary amount of things, in fact. However, she doesn't know everything. That's certainly nothing to be ashamed of as the sheer scale of the collected understanding of human society is truly vast. It's awe inspiring just how much information an individual human brain can hold. Multiply that by nearly seven billion people on the Earth and then add our ability to externalise information storage in digital form and the amount of information that we as a society can draw on is utterly staggering. Being able to process that much information is no small task.

However, that doesn't mean we're not going to try. One of the the goals of True Knowledge, and in turn Evi herself, is to make the world's knowledge understandable and accessible. This requires a certain degree of prioritisation. Even after having created an AI such as Evi and given her the tools to learn, it's not as simple as pointing her at the internet and saying "Now learn it all!"

Much of what happens behind the scenes at Evi HQ is enabling Evi to not only learn about new areas of knowledge, but to expand upon that which she already knows. These are termed verticals (a specific area of knowledge such as weather, food, travel etc) and horizontals (the extent to which Evi is able to deal with questions on the specific topic based on functionality of breadth of knowledge).  The majority of this is shaped by the demand of Evi's users - what are people asking about? What have people directly asked us to add as a feature?  What are expected popular features and topics?  

However we sometimes need to reach out directly and ask our users - what do you want from Evi? So how would you like to see Evi improved?  Expanded voice controls are coming, so assume that box to be ticked for now. Specifically we'd like to know what YOU would like to know. What kind of information would you like to get from Evi that she either isn't giving you right now, or you would prefer more detail on?  This will then help us to shape how Evi grows in the days, weeks, months and years to come. As ever, we'd love to hear your comments either here or through our facebook, Twitter or G+ pages. Or you can simply email us a feedback@trueknowledge.com

Share and Share alike

Knowledge - everyone has it. Everyone collects random tidbits of trivia throughout their lives that may never be of any viable use, but they still sit there. Not all information has to have a clear purpose - some of what we collect and share is done simply because we, as humans, find it interesting. As you might imagine, the topic of knowledge and trivia is a popular one here at True Knowledge.  In a recent discussion, in part sparked by the impending Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth, we were idly trying to think of one interesting fact about each British monarch. Some are simple and commonly known:

• Harold Godwinson: shot in the eye
• George III: Was insane and his son ruled as regent
• King John: Signed the Magna Carta

These are fairly tame, and some of the other nuggets of royal trivia were downright odd (Prince Charles's supposed collection of toilet seats!) However, some royals were more elusive. This led us to speculate about the amount of curious trivia we collect about seemingly inconsequential matters. As such, in a turn around to Evi's usual state of affairs, today we're curious about what YOU know. So we're asking you to tell us one interesting fact about one royal personage, living or dead, from anywhere in the world.  This could be impressive (1 in 500 of all men living in Asia can trace their descent to Ghengis Khan) to the humble (murderer, conqueror and warrior Ivan The Terrible died during a pleasant game of chess). We're as curious about what you keep in your heads as anything else, but in order to give this some structure, we'll keep the royal theme. So go to it, knowledge hounds. Share your trivia with us here or via@Eviknows on Twitter, Facebook or Google+ and let's simply enjoy knowledge for it's own sake.