Tags
Artificial intelligence, Eliza, Language, Nabaztag, Natural Language, Robot, Robotics, Siri, Uncanny valley
Thursday’s posts look at sociolinguistics or child language acquisition: accents, stereotypes and how children learn to speak
One thing I love about studying language (at least, the side of language I look at: the social, communication side) is that you’re looking at real people, and people are fascinating. You can’t study social constraints on language without talking to people, and I love talking to people, so it’s a perfect match.
But there’s another dimension closing in: artificial intelligence.
It all started off with Eliza, a therapist. If you talk to her, you’ll notice that she doesn’t actually take part in the conversation so much as repeat what you say in a question form or respond with a stock phrase (“Go on”, “Does it please you to…”, and so on). This is actually quite frustrating, especially as she’s meant to be a therapist. While the conversation is meant to be therapy, and so most of the talking is done by the ‘patient’, it’s frustrating to have someone repeat what you say as a question. Try asking for an explicit opinion (we tried asking her opinion on abortion), and she has a number of tricks (“We’re talking about you, not me”) to avoid giving one.
Since Eliza, things have developed a fair amount. Siri, for example, has the ability to participate in a conversation with actual responses, to provide information from the internet, your calendar, and so on. She has voice recognition which means it’s more realistic than typing, as with Eliza.
Other robots, such as the Nabaztag, retain information and provide feedback about your lifestyle. This means that people with dementia, for example, have something to remember whether they’ve eaten lunch when they can’t do so them-self.
Isn’t there something sightly creepy about them, though.
What about this one?
The Uncanny Valley
This is an example of the uncanny valley: when something inhuman resembles a human too much, but not enough that they’re completely realistic, they become creepy to look at. Scientists are trying to break through this valley, but haven’t quite managed to yet. You can find out more about the Uncanny Valley here.
Beyond with uncanny aspect of talking robots, I find the concept strange because there’s no personal aspect: surely that’s why we talk to others?
I can see robots being useful for certain groups of people, and I can understand Siri being interesting and funny.
However, robots are programmed. They can be useful, bu they don’t have natural personalities. They can’t have opinions of their own. And, being inhuman means they can’t have natural conversation, beyond what they’ve been programmed for.
If robots don’t have personalities (Except Sonny in I, Robot. Obviously he doesn’t actually exist…), what’s the use in talking to them?
Do you have a favourite fictional robot? Mine is definitely Marvyn from the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, with his pain in his diodes! Sue
Yes, the paranoid android. I’d actually have to agree with you… Although K9 in Doctor Who’s pretty high up the list!
The Nabaztag is pretty impressive. Most computerised responses tend to sound computerised largely because of the intonations in their sentences.This one’s actually pretty good! I think the programmers and linguists (if there were any involved) did a fantastic job with this one!
I would assume there were linguists involved! It’s impressive but a little too close to an Orwelian night mare for me!
Have you followed the progress of Watson, the AI from IBM which competed on ‘Jeopardy!’ and won? It developed a flair for using off-color slang (after being allowed to absorb the Urban Dictionary), to the point that they had to reset its memory. Seems it couldn’t learn social rules of conduct.
I hadn’t even heard of Watson – I’ll check it/him out!
Hey! Don’t diss AI! I love it. Moreover, I like to think of ourselves as made by some other thing. Not God in the deity sense, but God in the maker sense; like we would be “Gods” for these robots. So if we go by such a model, we are doing it wrong. We should first make it more self-reliant and then more intelligent. We are trying to make robots very intelligent humanoids but don’t strive to make them resilient, let alone reproductive. This is a field in which I have strong opinions and have put enough thought and blood into it to kichstart a sci-fi book-series of my own. :D
Sci-fi’s one thing, but as soon as you get intelligent robots, ‘I, Robot’ becomes a real Orwellian nightmare!
I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that I don’t know ‘I, Robot’ but I know I need to read Orwell ASAP. Its references crop up everywhere on internet!
I, Robot is a film with Will Smith in it. I’ve got it on the brain because I’m doing a project on usage of ‘aint’ vs. ‘isn’t'/’haven’t’ in different roles he plays…
Orwel’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book everyone should read!
That only makes me feel guilty but the Will Smith project sounds quite interesting! But shouldn’t it just require a search through the subtitles of his movie? Or do you watch entire movies for perspective?