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Meet Siri's rival, Iris, the future of chatbots
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Can eating worms cure disease? says Gabriele Sorci at the University of Burgundy, France. The results so far seem to indicate such infections can sometimes alleviate the symptoms of inflammatory diseases, he says. Goj’s team has been looking for parasites in other animals that may help people without also causing bad symptoms, settling on the pig whipworm (Trichuris
MORE than 7000 people worldwide are thought to have bought parasitic worms online and ingested them in an attempt to treat conditions ranging from depression to inflammatory bowel disease. Now a pig worm is being evaluated for approval as a food ingredient in Germany. If accepted, it will become the first officially approved product of its kind in Europe. The idea behind intentionally infecting yourself with parasites is that, until recent improvements in hygiene, they were common inhabitants of our bodies, and had evolved to secrete substances to pacify our immune systems so they can live in our guts. Detlev Goj of Thai company Tanawisa thinks that, in eliminating the problem of parasites in many countries – particularly the human hookworm, which can cause diarrhoea, pain, anaemia and weight loss – we are overlooking the benefits some may have. “A range of trials with various kinds of live worms have been conducted or are in progress,”
Meet Siri’s rival, Iris, the future of chatbots IS IRIS going to turn the tables on Siri? Iris, a chatbot developed at Stanford University in California, can handle complex conversations, and could pave the way for digital assistants that understand how we really speak. Whether we’re looking for the nearest cafe, playing music or updating a calendar, we’re getting pretty comfortable with digital 10 | NewScientist | 12 August 2017
DETLEV GOJ
Andy Coghlan
assistants like Siri and Alexa. But these systems can only deal with one task at a time, and more complicated interactions can leave them confused. Iris is different, however. It can handle more complex forms of conversation. When we talk, we use all sorts of linguistic tricks. One of the most common is nesting sub-conversations within an overarching discussion. You do this when you answer the question “when shall we meet at the pub?” by asking a further question about when that person finishes work. But this kind of interaction often leaves chatbots nonplussed.
shops, and it may then go on to be approved by other European Union member states. “This is the first live worm product to get this far,” says Goj. He hopes to sell small vials of the product, each containing 500, 1000 or 2500 eggs of the pig whipworm, to be consumed in food or drink. Unlike medical drugs, novel food ingredients don’t need to be shown to work in a particular way for approval in the EU – all that is required is evidence that they are safe. The question of whether parasitic worms really can treat autoimmune disorders remains open. “In my opinion, worm therapies belong in the same category of pseudoscience cult therapies as chelation therapy for autism,” says Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine, Texas. He suggests that approving live worm or worm egg treatments in Germany would be a “dumb idea”. “It would be better if we had more studies, but I’m actually not terribly concerned about this,” says Aaron Blackwell at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He says dangerous side effects might occur if worms can move into other parts of the body, but this is very rare. “Probably, taking these eggs may be no worse than many other dietary supplements that many people –Coming to the high street?– use regularly,” he says. n
suis). Because the parasites are adapted to life in pigs, the team has found that the worms can’t survive for long in humans. Goj and his colleagues haven’t yet managed to show that their worms have health benefits in clinical trials. But their whipworms were approved in Thailand in 2012 on the basis that they are a natural product and tests had found no ill effects. Now Germany’s Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety has accepted Goj’s whipworm product for official evaluation. If approved, it could be legally sold in high street
Iris imitates this human technique by turning language commands into blocks of text that can be flexibly combined. This allows user requests (such as “make a reservation”) to be tagged with instructions on how it can be stitched to further commands. This narrows the range of other commands that the tool can act on in the context of the conversation (arxiv.org/abs/1707.05015).
“I would say this is probably among the most complex behaviour I’ve seen from a chatbot to date”
“I would say this is probably among the most complex behaviour I’ve seen from a chatbot to date,” says Ryan Lowe at research lab OpenAI, who wasn’t involved in the work. Iris still lacks Alexa and Siri’s natural language ability, so for now it’s only being used as a data science tool. But Apple, Google and Amazon could use Iris’s underlying architecture to provide “a scaffolding of context” for future chatbots, says Ethan Fast, part of the team behind Iris. “We hope we can learn much higher-level stuff about how conversations flow,” he says. Niall Firth n
Can eating worms cure disease? says Gabriele Sorci at the University of Burgundy, France. The results so far seem to indicate such infections can sometimes alleviate the symptoms of inflammatory diseases, he says. Goj’s team has been looking for parasites in other animals that may help people without also causing bad symptoms, settling on the pig whipworm (Trichuris
MORE than 7000 people worldwide are thought to have bought parasitic worms online and ingested them in an attempt to treat conditions ranging from depression to inflammatory bowel disease. Now a pig worm is being evaluated for approval as a food ingredient in Germany. If accepted, it will become the first officially approved product of its kind in Europe. The idea behind intentionally infecting yourself with parasites is that, until recent improvements in hygiene, they were common inhabitants of our bodies, and had evolved to secrete substances to pacify our immune systems so they can live in our guts. Detlev Goj of Thai company Tanawisa thinks that, in eliminating the problem of parasites in many countries – particularly the human hookworm, which can cause diarrhoea, pain, anaemia and weight loss – we are overlooking the benefits some may have. “A range of trials with various kinds of live worms have been conducted or are in progress,”
Meet Siri’s rival, Iris, the future of chatbots IS IRIS going to turn the tables on Siri? Iris, a chatbot developed at Stanford University in California, can handle complex conversations, and could pave the way for digital assistants that understand how we really speak. Whether we’re looking for the nearest cafe, playing music or updating a calendar, we’re getting pretty comfortable with digital 10 | NewScientist | 12 August 2017
DETLEV GOJ
Andy Coghlan
assistants like Siri and Alexa. But these systems can only deal with one task at a time, and more complicated interactions can leave them confused. Iris is different, however. It can handle more complex forms of conversation. When we talk, we use all sorts of linguistic tricks. One of the most common is nesting sub-conversations within an overarching discussion. You do this when you answer the question “when shall we meet at the pub?” by asking a further question about when that person finishes work. But this kind of interaction often leaves chatbots nonplussed.
shops, and it may then go on to be approved by other European Union member states. “This is the first live worm product to get this far,” says Goj. He hopes to sell small vials of the product, each containing 500, 1000 or 2500 eggs of the pig whipworm, to be consumed in food or drink. Unlike medical drugs, novel food ingredients don’t need to be shown to work in a particular way for approval in the EU – all that is required is evidence that they are safe. The question of whether parasitic worms really can treat autoimmune disorders remains open. “In my opinion, worm therapies belong in the same category of pseudoscience cult therapies as chelation therapy for autism,” says Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine, Texas. He suggests that approving live worm or worm egg treatments in Germany would be a “dumb idea”. “It would be better if we had more studies, but I’m actually not terribly concerned about this,” says Aaron Blackwell at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He says dangerous side effects might occur if worms can move into other parts of the body, but this is very rare. “Probably, taking these eggs may be no worse than many other dietary supplements that many people –Coming to the high street?– use regularly,” he says. n
suis). Because the parasites are adapted to life in pigs, the team has found that the worms can’t survive for long in humans. Goj and his colleagues haven’t yet managed to show that their worms have health benefits in clinical trials. But their whipworms were approved in Thailand in 2012 on the basis that they are a natural product and tests had found no ill effects. Now Germany’s Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety has accepted Goj’s whipworm product for official evaluation. If approved, it could be legally sold in high street
Iris imitates this human technique by turning language commands into blocks of text that can be flexibly combined. This allows user requests (such as “make a reservation”) to be tagged with instructions on how it can be stitched to further commands. This narrows the range of other commands that the tool can act on in the context of the conversation (arxiv.org/abs/1707.05015).
“I would say this is probably among the most complex behaviour I’ve seen from a chatbot to date”
“I would say this is probably among the most complex behaviour I’ve seen from a chatbot to date,” says Ryan Lowe at research lab OpenAI, who wasn’t involved in the work. Iris still lacks Alexa and Siri’s natural language ability, so for now it’s only being used as a data science tool. But Apple, Google and Amazon could use Iris’s underlying architecture to provide “a scaffolding of context” for future chatbots, says Ethan Fast, part of the team behind Iris. “We hope we can learn much higher-level stuff about how conversations flow,” he says. Niall Firth n