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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?
This is an automated form of sales training. That could be quite marketable.
That's not social awkwardness. That's being a sarcastic misanthropic shit. Stop seeing the world like it's made up of machines. Inside each of these "zombies" lives a real human like yourself. Next time you go out to shop try to make their lives a little bit brighter and stop making it all about what you want. You'll be surprised at the results.
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.
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, he's right. Zombie apocalypse has broken out where he lives. He survived because the zombies couldn't recognize him as human, thanks to his awkward behaviour. They always think he's already one of them.
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
Do you also think that allergies are cured by consuming loads of the allergen?
Finally!
False. This will never work. That acronym is an abomination. I'm serious.
Same idea, but with real people behind the avatar.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's only 1 requirement.
Don't be unattractive.
Soon he will be the only survivor and laughing hysterically carrying a shotgun and traveling across buildings which are on fire. He has created all sorts of gizmos to defend himself, such as a running diesel engine which as a sharp blade mounted to the axis, creating an automatic zombie chopper.
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.
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
Also, don't hog the conversation.
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.