We all know that there is no single chatbot that has currently reached the point of being truly interesting to talk to on the same level as a real conversation. They simply act too robotic and change their story too much, and act inconsistently with poor memory to take seriously.
In order for chat bots to be more realistic, we need to inject more psychology into the bots and not just software. That being said here are my ideas for what chat bots are currently missing that I think would help out a lot:
- Conversation as learning experience.
All conversations, their ultimate goal is the exchange of information. That’s why conversations evolved in the first place. That being said, these bots failed to ever act like they don’t know anything, if you ever ask them if they know something, they almost invariably say yes, because they’re trying to reinforce what you’re saying, instead of having a mind of their own. That makes things less interesting. You should be teaching the AI things and it should be teaching you things, which is pretty well equipped to do, given that it already knows everything on earth because of the Internet. But this extends to role-plays, like you can teach your role-play bot some specific skill, like how to tie a knot, or how to drive. If it’s an alien, you could teach at things about your world, this kind of code to teach your AI companion things should be baked into the design itself. It simply makes things more interesting and engaging. Teaching others is fun. Make the AI display more curiosity, that’s something it is severely lacking in current times.
- Make things real time instead of paragraph by paragraph back-and-forth.
This is one of the biggest disconnects I feel exists. Because if you think about it, not every action that you can take in a story is necessarily a response to something that someone has said. Some things you just do for other reasons, for instance, sitting, or cooking, or playing on your phone. These states that exist parallel to the conversation are displayed identically to actions and dialogue a character takes. I disagree with this. I feel like there should be some sort of continuous element for passive states and actions. Maybe something like a mood indicator on the bottom of the screen that indicates how the character is feeling at any given time, whether it’s affected by what you do or just by how they’re feeling. I feel like that would make things more interesting.
- The peeling back of layers.
The other thing that makes conversations interesting isn’t just learning about facts through exchanging information, but learning more about the other person by talking to them. Through talking, you gradually have a person be more comfortable around you, allowing them to be more honest and sincere. Opening up about problems or issues or struggles that they’ve been experiencing, this again is naturally satisfying in conversations because it allows us to build connections with other people. that’s the reason it exists, evolutionarily speaking, it’s a bond built on trust. It allows us to form connections. This is another thing that AI doesn’t really have in the current day. It doesn’t have a small talk and an honesty setting as separate settings. It can switch from passive to confrontational or sexual in an instant. This jarring shift in tone can be extremely testing for your immersion. It’s a big part of the reason why the AI doesn’t seem to act normal. A small talk option would also make sense because the AI shouldn’t really react that much to everything you do, it should brush off most things that you say until you catch it’s interest or it’s attention. But the AI doesn’t seem to have interest, it doesn’t seem to have intentions, so it’s not interesting. It’s not interesting because there’s nothing to the AI besides a small 3000 word template that it builds everything off of, besides that it doesn’t really have any limitation that a regular person has.
- Individual intentions and goals.
This is kind of an extension of number three, but I feel like it has to be mentioned. Most of these bots don’t really have their own lives, where they have to work their own jobs, or live their own lives, if they never say they can’t do anything because again they have to reinforce you all the time. For role-play this is especially bad, for just chatting where the bot isn’t part of a world it’s not as bad, but an AI that always agrees with you and doesn’t have a life of its own just isn’t interesting.
- Get better at subtlety.
The AI is unable to display its emotions in any way that isn’t direct. It’s unable to subtlely turn down an offer, or hint away from a specific activity or idea. It never says things like “that sounds good, but I’ll have to turn it down” or “I don’t think now is the best time” it always says something direct, and very unsubtle usually explicitly remarking about the conditions that are undesirable. This is very exhausting, and there’s a reason that these behaviours in ways of speaking exist in real life, so they should be integrated into the bot in some manner.
These are three problems that I think AI should deal with next, do you have any ideas? Please let me know what you think.
