The purpose of this essay is to critically analyze an article by James Vlahos, “How Scientists are Bringing AI Assistants to Life.” The author claims artificial intelligence assistants are being brought to life by scientists. The author’s targeted audience includes both developers and users of AIs. The author offers advice to users on how to best interact with virtual assistants. In the same fashion, the author highlights how researchers and developers explore new ways to enhance the efficiency and personable interactions of AIs.
Creating an AI with tastes and preferences in art and can share its background story is almost like breathing life into an object. In the development of virtual assistants, the next big challenge is enabling them to communicate and familiarize themselves better with humans, possess more accuracy in predicting human needs, and enhance their performance of complex tasks (Pieraccini 6). Microsoft went big on personality in the development of AI assistants because of how consumers personify technology. AIs are built with character traits that are likable by humans. This characteristic makes users engage more with virtual assistants, enabling the AI to learn more about human interactions.
The author posts a strong argument to support his claim that scientists breathe life into an object. Developing an intelligence with a personality the same as a human is an astounding achievement. Creating lifelike personas that make one seamlessly communicate with an AI as a human and the advancement of technology from response generation to speech synthesis is evidence enough to support the author’s opinion. The ability to create lifelike personas for AIs highlights just how close to reality the AIs are. Asked whether she is alive, Alexa, an AI assistant, replied, “I’m not really alive, but I can be lively sometimes.” AI’s do not try to outsmart humans when answering questions, despite their personality traits being just imaginary and almost informal.
Work Cited
Pieraccini, Roberto. AI Assistants. MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2021.