![]() “I wouldn’t go that far: technology progresses at a high speed. And our test subjects felt she lacks humor and empathy.” So friendship with a chatbot is out of the question? ![]() Also, her responses were sometimes incomprehensible and even inappropriate. They noticed that she began to repeat herself and barely recollected earlier chats. Our human test subjects did not experience that with Mitsuku. ![]() “As people get to know each other better, their conversations deepen and become more personal. So we had high hopes, but with every next conversation, our test subjects’ enthusiasm dwindled: after a few chats the overall feeling was one of disappointment.” Where do things go wrong? They thought Mitsuku was funny and were impressed with what she knows. Our test subjects were very pleased to make Mitsuku’s acquaintance and were surprised that robots can be engaged in conversation. Marjolijn Antheunis And were friendships forged? Mitsuku is champion of chatting amongst robots: in 2018, and three times before, she won the Loebner Prize for the world’s best social chatbot. To find out, over a hundred human test subjects, mostly students, spent three weeks talking to chatbot Mitsuku every other day, relates Emmelyn Croes, who set up the experiment. Their aim is to establish if it can be done, becoming friends with a chatbot. Yet no matter how important the ‘why’ is, it is not the question the two Tilburg University researchers seek to answer. Is a chatbot a humane solution to loneliness? And it causes concern: in years to come, will we only be speaking to robots? There’s a YouTube video of an old lady proudly showing her photo album to a chatbot. People are glad of a sympathetic ear in difficult or lonely times. Fake, you might think, but the designers receive heaps of thank-you emails from users who really appreciate their chatbots, Professor Marjolijn Antheunis recounts. But: it’s a machine, a chatting robot, chatbot for short. Someone who always has time for you and with whom all of your secrets are safe.
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