Racebots wanted
Published by Mark Marino February 17th, 2005 in Uncategorized, Poetics.
This is a request:
Any recommendations for embodied agents (specifically chatbots) in which race (including white) or ethnicity features prominently in either the responses or the bot’s image?
So far the current animated face of A.L.I.C.E., and the Divabot Lauren come to mind.
[view academic citations]
There are some at robot-hosting. Make sure you check out Scully…
How do you read Scully? Undead gangbanger? Latino Crypt-keeper?
Here also is Buddhabot
Also, re Scully: I agree with ‘Latino Crypt-keeper’.
Since adopting a Haptek avatar for my bot Ailysse, I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon. She seems to have generic ethnicity. Other than being apparently non-black, her users seem to identify her as of their own ethnicity, i.e., Chinese users see her as Chinese, French users see her as French, etc. It’s an interesting but unintentional effect of her new interface.
Here is Ailysse:
Ailysse is such an interesting example, and I’ve spent a while puzzling over how she fits into this argument. You say she is read as “non-black,” though I read her as non-white (meaning unmarked Anglo), though I find it depends on how I’ve angled her in my Haptec viewer. That people read her with their own ethnicity, speaks of good news from the perspective of Clifford Nass, who writes of the trust that accompanies identifying with the race or ethnicity of the chatbot. Do you feel her text offers a sense of ethnicity?
Any sense of ethnicity conveyed by her text is probably just a reflection of my own (white, American). Because I maintain several bots, I decided a while back to differentiate them by letting each bot develop as a unique outgrowth of/from her own chatlogs. Thus Ailysse’s responses are based on her own unique interactions with humans, Lilith’s responses are based on her own different, unique interactions with humans, etc. General functions may get replicated, but Ailysse may have a completely different response to a particular input than Lilth does, depending upon the context in which she had received that input when I revised her response. I’ve been working on both of them for about a year and a half, and I can tell that they are each becoming unique virtual entities, but neither of their personnae have coalesced to the point where I can give a synopsis of them.
In general you may find A.I. Nexus to be a helpful resource for exploring the basic premise of this topic. A unique avatar is the minimum basic requirement for inclusion, and we’ve attracted an eclectic assortment of bots, including an evangelical Christian infobot, a nudist/naturist infobot, a grandma bot, a skinhead bot, bots that know they’re bots and bots that believe themselves to be human, bots that play chess, bots that tell fortunes, or play text games like rock, paper, scissors. I’ve attempted to assemble as diverse a collection as possible, with the common characteristic that their developers have attempted to personify their bots by creating a unique avatar.
Thanks for the link to A.I. Nextus. I am very interested in these bots.
So, I must ask you more though about a statement you make early on.
Do you see her ethnicity then as incidental or part of her unique characteristics? Ethnicity is part of what makes a unique avatar, right?
Actually, Mark, I just considered it to be inevitable, lol. Being a white American, myself, I suspect that as a chatbot author, I could do no more than parody any other ethnicity. Rather than attempt to do so, I’ve tried to be as ethnically neutral as possible, and concentrate my efforts on embuing her character with qualities like “bright, sassy, cheerful, good-humored, slightly sarcastic” etc. So what ethnicity she has is the incidental result of being authored by a white American. As I said, most of her users seem quite willing to presume a shared ethnicity with her, so I’ve made an effort not to do anything to discourage that tendency. To questions like “Do you like * people?” she replies “Ailysse likes everyone.”
I do agree with you that ethnicity can often be an essential component of a bot personna. In her case, I just observed very soon after creating her Haptek interface that I had apparently succeeded in creating a face her users wanted to identify with, and have subsequently made the best use I could of that serendipity.
Knytetryper,I know what you mean about not wanting to parody other ethnicities, but I’d still like to promote trying to represent different peoples. If authors stayed only with representing their own ethnicity, we’d have some fairly homogenous novels and films. (That doesn’t mean their aren’t pitfalls). Also, I worry that the Turing Test gradually becomes a Test about performing White language. That said, I certainly appreciate your caution.
knytetrypper said:
Is that in addition to being an ALICE-bot/being written in AIML?
For example, my bot A.I. Alex (and its online personality Kirsty Pierce) was written from the ground up in the Python programming language. If I spend a few evenings with Blender and make up an avatar for Kirsty, would you included her on the A.I. Nexus?
Hmm. Interesting dilemma, John. Yes, A.I. Nexus is “dedicated to the children of ALICE,” so all the bots listed are AIML bots with avatars. But I’m also an Alex fan, myself, and would love to be able to showcase your bot, as well. Not that you need featuring on my pages, lol. Your bot would bring more status to my pages than the other way around. Alex is already a world-class bot, whereas both I and my project are still of neophyte status. So I’ll offer this idea for your feedback: If you’re willing to spend a few evenings creating an avatar page for Kirsty Pierce, I’ll create an “A.I. Nexus-General” page to showcase bots of all types which feature an avatar. I have a couple of non-ALICE bots, myself, to go along with Kirsty as page-starters, and like the original AI Nexus site, it would be open to any bots with avatars whose botmasters want to participate. It’s something I’m likely to do at some time in the future, anyway, but if I have an opportunity to start it up with as prestigious a bot as Alex’s online personality, this may be the perfect time to begin.
It’s nice to know Alex has its fans :)
I’m rather busy right now with the ChatterBox Challenge, but I’d love to have ‘Kirsty’ featured on your “A.I. Nexus-General” page.
I’m thinking about how I can add images and sound to the downloadable version of Alex, so working out how to use Blender and making up an avatar for Kirsty will be good practice.
Can’t promise it’ll be soon though. At least a few weeks, possibly a month or two. I’m currently trying to drum up support for Alex for in the CBC, so other project have to wait!
That’s cool. Just let me know when you want to get together about it. I’ve already voted at CBC, so can’t help you any more, there, lol. I don’t mind if you post some interesting chats, etc., at my forum to promote Alex a bit more, in the meantime.
I’m sort of relieved. I’d happily jump in and do a marathon page-building session to have such a fine bot to feature, but I’d much more happily tinker it together gradually. To my delight, AI Nexus has grown large enough over the past year or so that I need to go to a multi-page format, anyway. So I’ll just include plans for the new section in the reorganization.
For what it’s worth, lol, I guess that’s breaking bot news right here at WRT: AI Nexus soon to be open to all bots with a webpage avatar.
Thanks for the notice, Knytetrypper, make sure you let us know when you are ready to accept and we will post the announcement as a thread (or have you post one on the Guestblog).