Re:Chatbots were the next big thing: what happened?
by tenaciousDaniel on Friday June 08, 2018 @01:41PM
(#17267863)
Ah, good point. I remember working with some chatbot tech a few years ago, and came to the conclusion that realistic speaking is not just unnecessary, it's directly undesirable.
The uncanny valley effect, in my opinion, is due to the fact that 99% of our speech and writing is not dictated by content or necessity, but instead driven by social tendencies.
If I ask my friend to lunch, I'll text him "lunch?". But if I ask my boss out to lunch, it's going to be something like a paragraph, explaining what I'd like to cover during the lunch.
Most of what we say is a kind of dance to ensure other people that we aren't stupid. We don't need this formality when dealing with non-human entities, so speaking in grammatical language when chatting with a bot feels incredibly stupid.
The uncanny valley effect, in my opinion, is due to the fact that 99% of our speech and writing is not dictated by content or necessity, but instead driven by social tendencies.
If I ask my friend to lunch, I'll text him "lunch?". But if I ask my boss out to lunch, it's going to be something like a paragraph, explaining what I'd like to cover during the lunch.
Most of what we say is a kind of dance to ensure other people that we aren't stupid. We don't need this formality when dealing with non-human entities, so speaking in grammatical language when chatting with a bot feels incredibly stupid.