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Ask HN: What does the cutting edge of AI-chatbots look like as of Oct 2017?
What does the cutting edge look like in conversation with a human?
What progress might we expect over the next few years?
I'm wondering how far are we away from chatbots that can serve as equally engaging over text as real friends (https://replika.ai/) or as equally effective as therapists (https://x2.ai/).
- ls5say 9y agoReal friends?
- PaulHoule 9y agoThere are two threads I am thinking of in response to your question. One of them is "chatbots aimed at helping people with some utilitarian way in a particular domain" where I think the interesting thing is being able to ask good questions. Imagine a nutrition tracking application where you take a picture of some food. If you took a picture of a burrito it cannot see what is inside. If you force people to fill out a detailed form, you won't get compliance. If you can ask people one or two chosen questions you can shrink the error bars on the nutrition parameters. The other one, which you seem to be interested in, is chatbots that play an emotional role and for that I think you should look at video game characters, particularly in the "visual novel" genre and video games that incorporate a "visual novel" element such as this series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjhgDvbmK5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjhgDvbmK5k The long and short of it is that this kind of game can get you into intense emotional relationships with characters and sometimes when you get the "bad ending" you might be depressed by it for a day or two. I like the VR angle because characters like that could be "too close" or "too far away" for comfort.