“How are you this morning, Black-box?”
“I’m good, Jim. How are you? I saw that picture of little Susan you posted online yesterday. She is so cute! And looking more like her mother every day.”
You just bought the pinstriped box.
This kind of emotional attachment between a human and sentient software can be found in the movie Her. In the movie, it’s both fascinating and disturbing. But you get the point. Emotional connections matter to humans. We don’t seem to care if the emotional attachment is to a real people or a fictional character in a book. The evidence supports the conclusion. People will choose an emotionally capable AI over an emotionally devoid one.
But even more impressive, and maybe more scary, than your lovely new pinstriped assistant is an artificial sentient machine capable of passing as human. First, I want to be clear. I am not suggesting this sentient AI is standing in your living room, and you think it’s human. That’s still the stuff of Sci-Fi. To explain my point, let me set the scene.
You need a haircut. You pull your smartphone from your pocket or purse and dial the salon. A young lady answers, “Good morning! Thanks for calling The Best Styles Salon. How many I help you?”
“Yes, I need a cut and color.”
“Yes, mama. Do you have a preferred stylist?” the young lady asks.
“Yes. I always use Nick. He’s the best!”
“Oh, Nick is great. Everyone loves him.” Pause. “When would you like to come in?”
“Wow. This week is really busy. Would you have something on Thursday, early afternoon?” you share.
“Hmm. Let me look.” Pause. “Well, Nick is already booked on Thursday afternoon. But he does have an opening at ten that morning. Any chance that would work?” Another pause. “Or we can try another stylist.” the young lady says.
“Well, you know what? I’ll make it work. I’ll be there at ten.”
“Wonderful! I have you down for Thursday at 10 am with Nick. Is there anything else?”
You finish with, “Nope. That’s it. See you then.” And you hang up the phone.
Imagine if the young lady at the salon was a sentient AI. If you had called the salon and an automated system of today answered the phone, you’d find a new salon. Everyone hates being funneled into an automated system.
“Please press one or say the name of your stylist.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you say, Alfonso?”
“No, I said ….” Click.
An AI capable of realistic emotional conversation is a game-changer for business and society. This kind of technology is already in development. At their I/O Conference in May 2018, Google demonstrated a conversation between a machine and a person. The person involved was unaware she was speaking to software. Google Duplex, the AI assistant, had no problem passing as a human caller. In this scenario, the AI was calling a salon to schedule a haircut for the individual. But the conversation was indistinguishable from a conversation with two human participants.
A sentient AI's ability to pass as human in a limited interaction is also being demonstrated through the written word. AI technology is writing articles and books that read the same as a human writing them. In some cases, articles by AI might be better written than those written by humans — just read some of my stuff for proof.
All of the efforts to mature AI from its current task-specific capabilities to a general intelligence technology are important. They will bring significant value as AI continues to grow into adulthood. But sentience, the emotion kind, is closer than a fully developed AGI and, in my estimation, even more important to the success of AI adoption and usefulness in our very emotional, human world.
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