Which co-inventor of the first artificial intelligence, Logic Theorist, also won a Nobel Prize in economics and pioneered the field of behavioral economics? (Answer at end of column). He believed computer simulations could help humans who are frustrated by our "bounded rationality." We try to act as rationally as we can, but we're existentially doomed to make choices that are not to our individual or collective economic benefit. We have limited, unreliable information; we have limited ability to analyze the information; and we have limited time to make decisions.

More than half a century since the debut of Logic Theorist, economists and stock market rocket scientists frequently use AI - with varying results. Macs and iDevices display the promise of a sleek minimalist philosophy to individual humans, but we're still waiting for the truly paperless office while we suffer from information overload. Computer and cyberspace technology provide countless time-saving and money-saving benefits and freebies, from Wikipedia to eBay to PayPal to free fax sites. The result, however, seems to be a nearly corresponding technology burden and expense. No one is sure what it all adds up to

Individual humans have access to only a handful of AI offerings that promise measurable results direct to the bottom line, and most of them are works in progress. Typically Web 2.0 interactive online sites, they rely in part on crowd sourcing or the economics of large-scale advertising and collective activity. Here's a sampling.

Mint is a free online AI that organizes your financial information in one place and helps you morph your budget. Using its patent-pending technology, Mint automatically pulls your financial information and automatically updates the details every night. It pays itself by notifying you of savings opportunities on credit cards, and all kinds of other banking and investment transactions, gleaned by an AI search algorithm

As with any online interactions and personal data stored in the cloud, the time-immemorial advice "caveat emptor" applies. Make sure you review Mint security measures and are comfortable with them before you sign up, and review regularly as well.

On errand-running day do you try to keep a running total of your debits and, now, your gas mileage? To the rescue, Mint just introduced an iPhone function that allows you to manually transmit updates in real time. Mint gives you business choices for the transaction you're inputting based on the geolocation function and will try to reconcile your manual input to the vendor's later electronic data transmission to avoid double entries. This is a free app. Some day you may be able to simply swipe you

Mint also sends you security alerts when there's unusual activity in one of your accounts, graphs spending trends and offers on-the-spot savings advice direct to your iPhone (optional). Soon, Mint will be able to remind you of bills coming due.

The new, free Re¢ipe.com gathers food specials and coupons from your neighborhood stores and associates them with 20,000+ on-file recipes (including photos) that use the on-sale items so that you can save time hunting for recipes and optimize grocery sales promotions. You can print coupons and find which local store is offering the best value for an ingredient. Users have already asked the site to add recipe nutrition information and support for special dietary needs. When the site can find a tasty, 15-minute recipe that uses on-sale lobster, rutabaga and nonpareils, you'll really be cooking.

On a related theme, if you're trying to reduce your waistline (or that other bottom line), Meal Snap, a 99c iPhone app, will identify your smart phone photo of a meal (or a description you input), tell you what's in it, estimate the calories and keep track of your meals.

In the Philly area, the Sustainable Business Network and other green organizations are "previewing" CommonSpace to help you save time, money, the environment and the rapidly-dwindling phenomenon of face-to-face human interaction. This interactive map suggests the best general area for a timely meet up that's accessible to all participants by foot, bicycle or public transportation. Use the Search tab to find a restaurant or park bench in the suggested area.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 encourages states to implement a "smart metering standard" for electricity consumption. Be on the lookout for developing information under the concept Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). Regionally, PECO will start by installing 600,000 smart meters. Eventually, smart meters will allow time-of-use pricing (taking advantage of non-peak usage rates), better outage detection and verification of power restoration, detection of equipment tampering and theft, and net metering (accumulating your rooftop solar power array credits). Companies, such as GE, are developing smart appliances to coordinate automatically with smart meters. One day your dishwasher will automatically wash your dishes when the least expensive power is available. Unfortunately, that day will not be soon. Google just decided to retire its Power Meter dashboard monitoring tool because smart metering is spreading so slowly that Google's economic "scaling" parameters red-lighted the feature.

As the smart grid and other data-driven AI come online, experts predict a tsunami of information overload. All of these AIs will be accessing the Internet to communicate directly with each other and to input billions of bits of unstructured data. We humans need new ideas about how to guide these advances to truly "free" us, in addition to more money-saving coupons.

Answer: Herbert Simon

Note about your comments and suggestions: Reactions, comments, suggestions for this column are always welcome via any medium. (I'm backlogged on topics, but I promise I'll get to your requests and ideas.) To comment and to see additional AI information, you can now follow me on Twitter @KathyGarges.

Sources and Additional Information:

Lindsay McSweeney, "Herbert Simon, AI and Bounded Rationality," Suite 101, March 9, 2010,
www.suite101.com/content/herbert-simon-ai-and-bounded-rationality-a211345

Mint: www.mint.com

Re¢ipe.com:
www.recipe.com/

Meal Snap: mealsnap.com/

Review of Meal Snap: Kathleen Squires, "A Picture is Worth 1,000 Calories," The Wall Street Journal, June 11-12, 2011,
online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304432304576369983237942502.html?KEYWORDS=picture+calories

CommonSpace: www.commonspace.us

Federal initiatives transforming the electric power industry:

www.smartgrid.gov

Samantha Wittchen, "It's Thinking: Are you ready to become one with the smart grid?" Grid, May 26, 2011,
www.gridphilly.com/grid-magazine/2011/5/26/its-thinking-are-you-ready-to-become-one-with-the-smart-grid.html

— Kathy Garges