{"id":1323,"date":"2020-01-07T04:40:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-07T04:40:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.replicant.ai\/meet-the-thinking-machine-why-we-chose-not-to-personify-ai-at-replicant\/"},"modified":"2023-05-09T21:00:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T21:00:58","slug":"meet-the-thinking-machine-why-we-chose-not-to-personify-ai-at-replicant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.replicant.com\/blog\/meet-the-thinking-machine-why-we-chose-not-to-personify-ai-at-replicant\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the \u201cThinking Machine\u201d: Why We Chose Not to Personify AI at Replicant"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for a while now. Al algorithms were brought to life more than fifty years ago, but it hasn\u2019t been until the last decade that we\u2019ve seen the impact of AI on our daily lives. AI is a key ingredient in intelligent applications, autonomous vehicles, and smart devices, but the evolution of AI is just like anything else, it \u201clearns\u201d to evolve with time.<\/p>\r\n

You may be thinking, \u201cbut AI isn\u2019t living, it is coded into development by humans so how could it have natural characteristics?\u201d True, but what makes AI unique is it\u2019s one of the most human-centric technologies of our generation.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Unlike other technologies, AI is capable of taking on human-like qualities like language and visual perception. This has many implications that we won\u2019t fully unpack here, but what we will begin to discuss, are the initial building blocks of AI\u2019s personified qualities, like giving it a name or not. We\u2019ve seen \u201cpersonified AI\u201d with devices like Amazon\u2019s Alexa. When you need to beckon Alexa it\u2019s easy, you just say \u201cAlexa\u201d and she starts thinking for you. But, Google\u2019s Home Assistant responds to, \u201cHey, Google,\u201d a command that intentionally lacks personality<\/a>. They both serve similar purposes but one is named \u201cAlexa\u201d (a human-like name) and the other \u201cGoogle\u201d (a computer-like name).\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

It\u2019s an important question to answer, whether or not to give AI human-like names, as names set the foundation for how we treat and represent everything we interact with. Do we want AI to feel like us or do we want to create delineated boundaries as AI continues to evolve?<\/p>\r\n

According to<\/a> the Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass, one might argue that we should give AI female names and voices as it\u2019s a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices. This could make giving and receiving commands more amicable between humans and AI, thus leading to greater adoption of AI assistants, but it could also alienate certain users.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

At Replicant, we believe that it comes down to personal preference. Both naming approaches serve a purpose and have their benefits and drawbacks, but from our experience, referring to AI in a more literal sense helps to reduce bias and create a neutral starting point for early users.<\/p>\r\n

It\u2019s also fair to say that until we have general purpose AI, we should name AI for what it is – technology. That\u2019s why we chose to call our conversational AI platform the \u201cThinking Machine\u201d. We wanted a transparent name that implicitly highlights the underlying technology without alienating users. The \u201cThinking Machine\u201d gives us an opportunity to broaden the potential of our platform by using a name that makes users think of the technology first before anything else.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

When it comes to the actual experience of using Replicant\u2019s conversational AI platform however, we\u2019ve taken great care to make it as human-like as possible. As stated by<\/a> the World Economic Forum, \u201cDesigning human-centric AI interactions, optimized to develop trusted relationships between AI and humans, presents the largest opportunity for human and societal advancement in the modern era.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

When our users speak with Replicant Voice, we want it to feel as natural and emotive as possible. We want customer service agents to be able to rely on Replicant to handle tier-1 customer support issues so they can focus on customer service issues that require the most human qualities of all, compassion and empathy. We can only achieve this vision if the quality of Replicant Voice is exceptional. You can read more here<\/a> on the principles we\u2019ve developed to craft great human to machine conversations to clear the path for “human-centric AI interactions”.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Ultimately the decision of whether or not to name AI assistants and conversational AI platforms is up to companies and customers. Here are a few questions to evaluate and consider throughout the process:\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n