Imagine software that's like a craftsman--a web designer, a code tester, an artist, a ghostwriter, a patent lawyer--and that you can interact with in a manner similar to a human. You can describe the product in a coarse way, perhaps with natural language, yet, later, adjust details at a final level in a very accessible manner, if need be.
Today's software doesn't do that. Microsoft Word focuses on layout rather than content and frequently gets in the way of the writing process. Developing graphics requires a degree in graphics, artistic sense and mastery of Adobe Illustrator and Autodesk Maya.
The business plan of SoftPerson, LLC to build a natural language wordprocessor was a finalist and won prize money in the 2002 New Venture Championship national business plan competition held at the University of Oregon Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship. The business plan also made semifinalist in other national business plan competitions.
SoftPerson developed a unique, powerful and general-purpose artificial intelligence technology based on precise symbolic reasoning rather than incomplete heuristics, special cases or statistics. That said, our AI technology can integrate seamlessly with domains like computer vision that are difficult to model and require the numerical techniques of machine learning.