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Advanced Chatbot Could Help With Social Awkwardness
mikejuk writes "Researchers at MIT Media Lab are working on an automated personal-computer-based system designed to help people improve interpersonal and conversational skills. The software is called MACH, short for My Automated Conversation coacH (pdf). It makes use of a computer-generated onscreen face to simulate interactive conversations. It performs facial, speech, and behavior analysis and synthesis to emulate human-to-human responses. At the end of the session it provides the user with feedback on their performance. Using a webcam the program can analyze facial expressions, including smiling and head gestures while its voice recognition system analyzes not only what you say but also how you say it and notes non-verbal vocalizations. As feedback you watch the video side-by-side with the analysis of your behavior — see the video of it in action. It has already been shown to improve job interview techniques and other potential uses are coaching in public speaking and dating."
I guess some social skill is better than none, especially for those with serious disorders. This could have benefits.
Yet, somehow this reminds me of Comcast's CableCard activation line. Every time I've called it, I get someone sounding exactly the same... an guy with a truly bizarre, unplaceable and somewhat feminine accent and an equally WTF speech pattern.
Some outsourced call center is training every one of their employees to sound exactly the same, to the point that I've called from multiple time zones, at all hours of the day, and from different numbers/accounts and am still not entirely sure if they have more than a single sleepless extraterrestrial behind the phone. Creepy as hell. And this type of app sounds like just the thing to do that.
Just saying....
Never had to deal with someone with autism i take it? This sounds like it would be perfect for those with milder forms of autism to work on their ability to interact with strangers.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
If these geeks want dates, I think they'd get more benefit out of a Bathbot.
#DeleteChrome
I have no doubt that making a practice speech and then watching yourself on camera can help. People were doing it for ages. Question is if this 'bot' bolted on top of simple visual/audio feedback loop adds any value (or maybe it makes it worse then trying to analyse your performance without hindrance).
A dictionary?! You use a dictionary for improving your interpersonal communication? Perhaps chatbot is exactly what you need.
The paper has a diagram showing a graph of % smile over time. Is this calibrated for those of us who suffer from b**chy resting face / resting a**hole face?
Isn't this much like Microsoft Chat, where every person in the irc channel was a comic character with expressions?
This would be nice....But, I don't like the sound of it, that sound being that it'll work over the internet. I'm not going to use anything "in teh cloud". I can barely manage to work up the courage to shop at walmart, which is practically staffed with zombies. No way I'm going to upload this crap somewhere and be observed by a bunch of people watching my every twitch for a deeper meaning. NOOOOOO THANKYOU!
This is an automated form of sales training. That could be quite marketable.
How about a chat-bot that simulates a night down at the local-pub ...or better yet, a robot that takes anti-social people there so they can get away from their computer?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
DR SBAITSO, by creative labs, please enter your name: fuck
hello fuck,
I am here to help you. say whatever is on your mind freely. our conversation will be kept in strict confidence. memory contents will be wiped off after you leave. So, tell me about your problems.
>fuck.
I will get parity error if you keep talking in this asdf way.
>fuck
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
PARITY
>lets talk about sexy stuffs.
How old are you?
>13
wait a few more years kid..
Now, instead of just communicating with each other -- sometimes awkwardly, I guess -- humans are going to be taught by a computer how to talk to other humans.
... that geeks will start breeding.
Socially awkward nerds build machine for socially awkward nerds to learn to be less awkward.
So they are trying to make a bot that passes the turing test?
Hitler Hitler Hitler!
Uh, it doesn't seem to be working.
Table-ized A.I.
Talking to girls is only possible if the girls also want to talk to you. Which is only the case if you already have sufficient interpersonal and conversational skills.
It's like with learning a language. If you are sufficiently fluent in a foreign language, it helps a lot to talk to native speakers of that language to improve your language skills. However if you don't understand the language at all, talking to a native speaker is simply not possible.
Well, a dictionary of facial expressions could indeed be helpful.
There are plenty of unemployed sociologist grads. So why does this need automating? Focus on making a bot that does dishes first.
Table-ized A.I.
No. They are trying to apply a technological solution to a social problem.
Is MACH available for me to use?
We would love to make the system available to the general mass for free. Here are the caveats.
MACH was developed as part of a PhD thesis consisting of more than half a million lines of code. The current prototype works on a personal laptop. However, it is an extremely complicated system that we were able to put together with 2 years of effort.
In order to make a public release with seamless interaction experience, we would need to do more testing.
It is possible to make MACH work in a computer browser and make it widely accessible. However, that will require hiring 2-3 full time software engineers with 6-12 months of development and test period. Currently, we are looking for resources to make that happen. If you are in a position to support our work, or know of any funding agencies who might be interested to fund us, please do get in touch (mehoque at media dot mit dot edu) with us. In the mean time, please feel free to write/tweet to AutismSpeaks, NLMFF, Autism Science Foundation
I am remote and I would like to participate in your studies.
Recruiting participants is the most challenging part of our research and we appreciate your interest. However, with our current experimental set up, it makes it very difficult for us to recruit participants unless they are local. We hope to address this issue by developing an online version of our system.
I would like to be notified when the system becomes available to public.
Please sign up here. http://goo.gl/LDwb8
And then socially awkward men would have even less need to interact with other human beings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwLy8sHH5as
And a dictionary of farcical expressions could indeed be funny. Then again, there is /.
Do you also think that allergies are cured by consuming loads of the allergen?
Sounds like Slashdot has some serious competition ...
Finally!
False. This will never work. That acronym is an abomination. I'm serious.
I'm not sure hopw this will help with how distracting skin texture, follicle pattern and iris folds are, let alone incorrect pronunciation and useage.
Some are...
Same idea, but with real people behind the avatar.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's only 1 requirement.
Don't be unattractive.
Piece of advice from someone who has "studied pickup" (yes, I confess to reading numerous pirated ebooks and watching in-field hidden camera videos) and consequently actually getting success with girls: If you really are so shy that you can't say anything to girls, you should start practicing by talking to girls that are obliged to respond positively. That is, go to (clothing) stores and talk to shop assistants - ask for advice because you need to buy a gift for your mother or your sister. Don't have the objective to pick her up (even though it's quite doable when you've gained experience), instead just try to get relaxed when talking to a girl. In general becoming more talkative around strangers makes it easier to talk to hot chicks so if you're not doing it, start greeting your neighbors etc. etc. Being a social person makes you attractive, if you're with a girl and a casual acquaintance just says "hi!" to you, it increases your value in her eyes.
Lighten up, Francis.
Nope, wouldn't help one bit. From personal experience, and from what most other autists say, the problem is not really looking at someones face. It's the excrutiating pain of looking at the eyes of a person full of deceit (read as: almost all humanity). The discongruity of what they are saying and what their eyes and body are saying is almost debilitating. On the rare occassions I run into someone that is all about truth there is absolutely no awkwardness and I can spend hours looking them directly in the eyes and making a connection with them.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
The Internet and especially so-called 'social media' claim to connect people and bring them together, but what I'm seeing more and more of is that it's doing the exact opposite of that: it's enabling socially avoidant people an excuse and a mechanism by which they can avoid actual contact with other people. You cannot build interpersonal skills with just text on a screen. I've been using computers since way before the Internet was even invented, let alone publicly accessible, back when all there was were BBSs (computer Bulletin Board Systems), it's been the same problem with them as with now, as I said above: it's not 'real' human interaction, it's just text on a screen. You don't get a tone of voice, facial expressions, body language, or experience dealing with the pressure of a real-time conversation where timing is just as important as content and you have to develop the ability to adapt in realtime. Even video chat isn't even close to the same thing as conversing with someone live, in-person, face-to-face. In addition to this so-called 'social media' has created a stratification: instead of people being just 'friends', now we have 'friends' (lower case), people we've never met in person (and likely never will) and 'Friends' (upper case), people we actually know in real life. The lower-case version, really, doesn't count; they may as well be computer simulations, just some server somewhere generating human-like responses, for all the value in real human interactions they represent. Some other commenter said "You don't cure allergies by taking large doses of what you're allergic to", which is wrong: I get allergy shots, and the antigens are made from what you're allergic to, and it builds up your immunity, the purpose of which is so you can, ultimately, stop having to take antihistamines. So it should be with human social development: You have social anxiety problems? You are afraid and avoid social situations? You need to force yourself to face those fears, make yourself enter into social situations. Yes, you'll have many failures, but how is that different from learning any other new skill? So while the OP was being a jerk about it, I agree with the spirit of what was said: Get off social media, get off the Internet, get out into the Real World, talk to actual living human beings, learn how to interact with them effectively; profit from it.
wow, never thought it that way, but from my experience this is so true - if you are acting like simpleton, there are many people who are coming to use your benevolence, like flies are coming to open honey jar.
However there are many other problems, that come with lack of understanding how to use body language properly and autists here are acting like monkeys in front of mirror, where copying and sending back exactly same body language signals lead to disaster, because body language is meant for talking and not echoing... have you had any proper conversation with kid, who is repeating like parrot everything you say? It is irritating and childish and that is very big problem that in personal relationships and in professional life as well many things won't work, because of lack of understanding that people around you are actually perceiving you differently than you are thinking about yourself, because you are also constantly sending out wrong body language signals.
A compuer app to help peole who spend too much time on computers and video games.
The Mole Man creating an entire underground society of fake humans in which to hang out doesn't sound so stupid now, does it John Byrne!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKHyqjHqQLU
If human interaction is what you need practice with, a computer is a poor substitute.
John_Chalisque
That is the cure, you buttfart-sniffing goatfuckers! Jeesus!
i'm guessing you don't talk to many girls
This will never work.
since just about everyone who has ever made such claim has been ultimately proven wrong, i'm sure the developers appreciate your blessing in disguise
That acronym is an abomination
that i actually agree with
Also, don't hog the conversation.
...it adapts socially awkward people to communicate more freely with chatbots. Sounds legit.
I know one that has spent time with the web and irc chatbots. It has helped his social awkwardness immensely.
I happen to prefer it when people fidget and look at their feet during a conversation. It gives me the impression that they're more emotionally involved in the conversation. It demonstrates a natural respect for my opinion.
Just because the extroverts on tv have conversations with eye contact doesn't mean it's the "correct" approach.