Re:Facebook's Yann LeCunn Discusses Digital Companions and AI
by prawn on Saturday March 28, 2015 @01:07AM
(#9280579)
You're judging a product now. I'm telling you to judge it in a few years when it is more convincing, more subtle, etc. People already "fall in love" online with people they've never met, partly because someone showed some interest in them. Many are scammed easily online because their greed has them look past telltale signs.
You've just interacted with me on some level, but what's to say I exist? Pretend I only have social network profiles online for you to background check. Those would be easy to dynamically and convincingly generate.
And don't just imagine your reaction, but the reaction of multitudes of people who aren't skeptical about religion, about crystal healing, who are superstitious, who watch whatever is put in front of them, etc.
I bet someone could scan my body of online work and design an array of profiles that might pique my interest.
Re:Facebook's Yann LeCunn Discusses Digital Companions and AI
by eli_gottlieb on Saturday March 28, 2015 @10:47AM
(#9281632)
The hard part isn't generating the profiles -- that's dead easy. It's making the programs generate fluent conversation in natural language with interesting domain knowledge -- that's still believed to be AI-complete.
Nothing, really. A voice in a chatbox is still only in a chatbox, and this whole prospect will creep people out sufficiently to make them leave Facebook.
(My mother apparently has something called "Google Cards" on her phone that creeped her out by reading her email and giving her reminders of things. Facebook false-friends that imitate living people without being living people are going to creep her out even more.)
On the other hand, the scientist in me notes that if you're actually trying to make my Facebook False Friend more interesting than a real person, you're going to have to teach it to fluently and accurately discuss research-level science and mathematics, teach me analytic philosophy, and then argue about which anime characters are best. That's really asking quite a lot! I don't think Facebook will accomplish anything quite that "scifi" in the next few years.