SPooN.ai: Artificial Creatures
Deliver Immersive User Engagement in A Voice/AI Powered World
Author:
Michael D. Radice, Managing Director, ChartaCloud Robotics LLC.
Do
you feel connected to the technology you use? Wouldn’t it be nice to know that the
technology that you are using knows you exist as a real and unique person? That
you are not just another technology system or perhaps a robot? This is the
first rule of engagement that inspired and drove the development of a new
digital interface technology in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
products and voice powered services.
To
more fully frame this discussion, we need to take a moment to reflect upon the
experience with robots. The emergence of robots especially ‘humanoid style’
robots, have taught us a great many lessons. Interaction and engagement
expectations (i.e. human robot interface - HRI) with humanoid robots were and
remain high. Today’s robots struggle to meet that expectation. Robots are,
however, amazingly powerful in at least two aspects. One, they excel in the
power of attraction. That is, they can attract and gather an audience. Two, they
can be seductive in their anthropomorphic attributes. People like and desire to
think and want to believe they are alive. The point is, is that as hardware
technologies, which is what robots are, the current state of interface with
robots leaves us wanting more. The best I have experienced thus far is the
seductive power of the NAO humanoid style robot. Its design and its animated
engagement using what is called autonomous life, does proffer powerful
engagement. These previous robot
engagement experiences provided the stimulation that a new style interface to
digital technology was needed. One that meets real life personal engagement expectations.
AI products are robots of a different sort.
We
have moved fast past the point where a breakthrough in creating a new interface
to digital technology was needed. AI, voice-powered interaction, machine
learning, facial recognition, emotional discernment are the technologies
driving the demand and the need for a new unified interface to digital
technology. For product developers, the challenge is even greater. How do you create
an application interface that embraces so many disparate interaction elements?
The forces pulling and pushing the need for creating a new model interface in AI
powered digital technologies has in my opinion become irresistible. With 150
million users using voice to interface with a growing aspect of their daily AI
driven technology, the stakes for creating a breakthrough were getting higher. The
creation of a new unified interface is becoming a winner take all proposition. The
‘mouse’ won’t get us there. The stylus was never the end-all be-all. Touch
screen interfaces work well but many times they too can be problematic.
Chatbots are well, just that chatbots. Infobots are very much solo info-point
devices giving square answers to round questions. Technology is now capable of
seeing you and knowing who you are, discerning a lot about your emotional
state, knowing your experiential preferences. For example, what will be the
defining attributes for delivering AI driven services in collective spaces like
transportation centers, hospitals, office buildings, and shopping malls? We
know for sure that it will be heavily formulated as knowledge-based and experience
driven AI services that learn.
So, here come the
‘artificial creatures’ and the Oxytocin Element
For
further insight we can look around and take note that many of mankind’s most
powerful inventions and creations were inspired and derived from the biological
world. Outside of person to person bonding is there an example of stronger
bonding than that between people and their pets? What is the bonding interface
attribute that generates such an instant, warm and comfortable sensation
reaction in our brains? When we experience such a warm encounter with a pet or
yes, a person, we generate brain chemical called oxytocin. While oxytocin helps
cement bonds between people, it also simply stated, makes us feel good. Hence
another clue to defining the future AI interface. Its use must result in a
positive sense of personal interaction. An understanding of all this brain
functionality, what I call ‘brain tech’ and the power of biological design and
what I now refer to as zoomorphic attributes become central and powerful
elements that are being used by the creators of the new universal AI interface.
I have seen it, used it, and it is called SPooN.
This is where ‘artificial creatures’
which are a creation of SPooN enter the scene. They are called SPooNys. Think
of SpooNy’s as AI soft robots or smart avatars that actually possess the
capacity to be your interface to all of your technology. A SPooNy is smart,
being driven by AI and empowered with facial and emotional recognition to help
guide the interaction. A SpooNy takes on the persona of an artificial creature
in the form of soft robot creature. One of them looks like this.
It
has eyes that follow you. It has facial responses that engage you with its
zoomorphic character. It can feel the user.
A
SpooNy can be on any digital device. A personal device or an information kiosk.
Integrated
into the creature’s face are 11 embedded dynamic attributes that create the
personal engagement levels that make SPooNy so powerful.
And
yes, SpooNy speaks multiple languages currently Chinese, English, French,
Japanese, and Spanish are already available with more to come.
Here
is an implementation of a SpooNy ‘living, moving following and reaching out’
deployed on a robotics| armature. A powerful engagement mode for hospitality, retail
and targeted use points such as in health care. Like robots it attracts a
crowd. Tests prove that it is more powerful at engaging a person than a robot.
Here is a SpooNy deployed in a
six-foot-high information kiosk.
This info ‘totem’ make sense in what I refer
to as the ‘collectives’ environment as the following discussion describes. Think
of places like office buildings, transportation centers, hospitals, hotels as
large complex collectives. These collectives are made up of a collection of active
and internally changing elements such as individuals, trains, buses, taxis, and
of passive elements such as office spaces, lobbies, mechanical centers, stores,
and restaurants for example. They combine to create the entire collective
entity. SpooNy is a universal digital
interface that can embrace a person’s AI and voice driven interaction(1)
with all and or each the complex elements that comprise the ‘collective’,
creating an AI driven kiosk with depth and a face and/or a voice that can have a relationship based immersive engagement
with a person.
With
AI powered SPooNy collectives can take on a reflective engagement persona
sensing the needs and desires of the person with whom SPooNy is engaging.
SpooNy can be the unique face of the collective. SPooNy embraces and provides a
collective’s entire persona so that people can interact with the entire
collective as either as an entity or on a ‘person to person’ basis.
Having
experienced SpooNy firsthand I know that AI now has a face. SPooNy.
SpooNy
is a product of SPooN.ai, Paris, France. More information about SpooNy can be
found at www.robotteca.com
(1)
Consider
the power of this voice/conversational interface in providing ADA sanctioned
service assistance.
Michael Radice is Chairman of the
Technology Advisory Board for ChartaCloud’s ROBOTTECA.COM and can be reached at
info@chartacloud.com | ph: 603-379-9148
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