

For Sympathetic Ear, More Chinese Turn to Smartphone Program - kordless
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/science/for-sympathetic-ear-more-chinese-turn-to-smartphone-program.html?_r=0

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the_af
From the article:

> _Xiaoice, whose name translates roughly to “Little Bing,” after the
> Microsoft search engine, is a striking example of the advancements in
> artificial-intelligence software that mimics the human brain._

"Striking example"? "Artificial-intelligence"? "Mimics the human brain"? From
the example chats, it seems to be just a chatbot, maybe a little more
convincing than ELIZA. If there is a piece of news here, it's not about
Xiaoice but about people feeling so lonely they can pretend a chatbot is their
"friend". I realize this is standard journalist exaggeration, so I'll ask: is
there any technical info on Xiaoice that explains how this chatbot stands out
from the rest? Is this the current state of the art?

~~~
kordless
I posted this on a whim because I found the article in conflict with itself.
Saying 'it remembers conversations' and then later 'no data is saved about the
user' just shows how conflicting. That lonely people are using it is even
worse - they could be adding to their suffering by sharing their personal
details.

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visarga
When these chat bots will become good enough there will be many people
choosing to have relationships with them. I think people will also have sex
with them if they were built as androids. There is an anime called Chobits
which explores this angle.

Other uses: personal tutoring, personal assistant and taking care of the
elderly, when they can get robotics up to par. The Japanese consider this a
possible solution to their aging society crisis.

We could also delegate a lot of our social interactions to our bots, let the
bots handle between themselves the details of our daily dealings.

The problem is, what will happen to our society when people will start
preferring the bots?

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Gys
previous submission:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9984142)

