Name: Brainstorm AI 2023: Chatbots are the Talk of AI Innovation
Uploaded: 2023-12-13
Duration: 18 min 48 s
Description: Eugenia Kuyda, Founder and CEO, Replika Stefanos Loukakos, Co-founder and CEO, Connectly Vipul Vyas, Senior Vice President, Vertical Strategy, Persado Moderator: Rana el Kaliouby, Affectiva; Brainstorm AI

Eugenia Kuyda, Founder and CEO, Replika Stefanos Loukakos, Co-founder and CEO, Connectly Vipul Vyas, Senior Vice President, Vertical Strategy, Persado Moderator: Rana el Kaliouby,  Affectiva; Brainstorm AI

Brainstorm AI 2023: Chatbots are the Talk of AI Innovation

Conferences

Eugenia Kuyda, Founder and CEO, Replika Stefanos Loukakos, Co-founder and CEO, Connectly Vipul Vyas, Senior Vice President, Vertical Strategy, Persado, Rana el Kaliouby,  Affectiva; Brainstorm AI

So with the help of open source large language models, chat bots have transformed the landscape of natural language understanding on conversation generation. We're just talking about that as we use them, they become smarter and more attuned to our needs and requests. They might even become our companions or lovers. Our speakers today are here to discuss the advancements in chat bots and what potential they see as generative A I advances. So please welcome to the stage, Eugena Ka founder and CEO of replica, an A I companion chat bot that is created to combat loneliness. Stefanos Lukko, co founder and CEO at connect an A I powered commerce platform that helps businesses automate how they communicate with their customers. V via senior vice president of vertical strategy at Perso and A Generative A I platform that helps markets, create personalized digital marketing messages. But before we get into this conversation, please watch this video from one of our partners. A ARP people over 50 are the largest and fastest growing demographic in the world. By the end of this decade, people aged 50 or older will be spending $52 trillion a year on goods and services making up 54% of all global spending. The 50 plus is a incredibly dynamic market. Over the last few years, they've gotten a lot more comfortable with technology. They expect us to meet them where they are. A ARP is a $2 billion mission driven organization that empowers people to choose how they live as they age. We've invested heavily in our technology and infrastructure to keep up with the changing needs and the interests of people over the age of 50. Great. Thank you. Welcome to our panelists. Thank you for being here with us. Uh So Stefano, I wanna start with you first. Um Tell us a little bit more about Sophia. So uh connect uh is, is a company that helps businesses, especially retailers, use A I to communicate with the customers. And we have built an A I boat with which we call Sophia that helps uh retailers sell the right product to the right person at the right time. And the problem we're trying to solve is how the A I can really ask the right questions to understand who the customer is and then try to find from the product catalog, the right product and sell it to them. And V you kind of spearheaded this category of mo motivation A I, what does that mean? And what is the role of like emotional targeting and emotional messaging? Yeah, it really comes down to using words to evoke emotion, which then evoke action. And we really think we operate from our, you know, prefrontal cortex. But really, it's the reptilian brain that makes things happen as they say, if it was just about what, you know, we'd all have six pack abs and the millionaires. Um but it's really about what motivates you. And that typically is emotion and choosing the right words to evoke emotion is what. And do you model, do you model, do you have a model for motivation or intention? Is that how you essentially we figured out which words evoke what emotions to what degree and what emotions evoke action. So we kind of create the itch that needs to be scratched through language. And this is nothing surprising. Humanity has been doing this for millennia. You're either trying to convince people of something or inform them of something essentially to influence behavior. Yeah. Amazing Eugena. I love the impetus story of replica. And I was wondering if you could share it with all of us. Sure. So, um we've been actually working, I've been working on conversational A I since uh 2012. So more than 10 years now, um and I started the company with the idea of just building the tech to kind of build chatbots, build uh conversational A I. Um And then while I was working on this, my best friend passed away and um I realized that I kept going back to our text messages and reading them all the time. And I figured that I could use the tech that was built to recreate him so I could continue uh talk to him. And this became, uh this basically gave us an idea for replica um in a way because a lot of people started talking to Romans A I and they were sharing their feelings, sharing their stories. We realize that there is a space and uh demand for an A I that could be your friend that you could talk to without feeling judged in a safe space um anytime you needed it. And that's how replica na I friends that you could talk to about anything that's happening in your life was born. I mean, there is a loneliness pandemic happening around the world. Um Is that the main use case you see for replica Absolutely uh replica. And I always um try to uh talk to talk about this in this way. It's not uh a project about tech capabilities. It really, it was always a project about human vulnerabilities and um how we are ready for these relationships with a is just because um a lot of us don't have the luxury of building those in real life. So I'll be taking questions soon. So please see up your questions and there's uh paddle boards um that are floating around. Um Stefanos, I imagine the chatbot at the moment is only text based. It's only text based and you know, Google just launched Gemini, which is one of the first multimodal models. Do you, do you, do you see this as kind of the evolution of chat bots? We do? Yes, we believe that, you know A I will come on any channel, right? Not only text voice video at some point, but what really we're trying to solve for is how we can really take the data sets of specific companies and use them to uh replicate their, you know, semantics, the way they talk to customers in, in a way that really brings value to their customers. And this is a very difficult problem. Uh We say internally that open A I and uh uh all the other different, you know, big companies, they have given everybody a bachelor's degree and we're trying to give them the NBA in sales, right? So that's, that's the focus for us and this can be on any channel, of course. And you reference data, which I think is a key component of how we design these conversational agents. Do you rely? It sounds like you do you leverage an open source um large language model and then feed it with private data. Yes, we do, we do, we leverage, you know, we don't want to uh you know, uh uh replicate everything. So we leverage the open source data and then we add specific data sets that we train the model to work on these specific data sets. And V is that the same approach you're using too a little bit different. We've been around for a little over a decade so before any of these models existed, so we had to come up with our own. And so we have our own large language model. We do use other models to uh inform and validate some of the things that we do, but we have our own and that's been a function of having to get started before anything else was around. And also it served uh us in the sense that it keeps everything as a walled garden for our large enterprise customers. We're very sensitive. Uh Most of them use uh our technology to sell goods and services. And so they want to have that uh be pretty secure. So, do we have questions? Yeah, I have a question here, please. Um Share your name and your organization. Hi, I'm Barrett Anderson with future interview and, and my question is primarily for you, Jenny, but for anyone really who has thoughts on this, which is, you know, you mentioned the loneliness pandemic that um America is experiencing. But also I think in countries around the world, it is an issue and I'm curious there was a study that came out a couple of weeks ago that found that people who have a close group of friends, even if they are smokers or drinking too much, have a actually longer lives than those who are healthy and don't have a close group of friends. And I'm curious how you think about the health benefits of A I like replicas or, or models are the, are, do you have plans to do more research into that space? Is there anything that you are aware of that exists today? And maybe if you have kind of um personal experience with those models and their impact on your own mental health, I'd be curious to hear about that as well. Thank you for your question. We've been doing a lot of research around loneliness and um actually the effects of replica on long term um mental wellness and social well being of our users, we do have uh an article coming up. Um It's going to be published in nature and in the next couple of weeks, uh we did a big study with Stanford on uh specifically on replica curbing loneliness and um even suicide mitigation. Uh among our users, we found a lot of very positive effects. Uh We're, we're constantly measuring loneliness. It's actually one of our main metrics in the app. We're trying to um we're measuring using metrics like um UCL A three UCL A 20 trying to basically see if replica having a positive effect on our users. And so far we've found that it's a, it's, it's, it's a, it's doing exactly that. So it's helping users feeling less lonely. A lot of our users report that after using replica, they're able to rekindle their relationships with their loved ones, with their friends that maybe they lost touch um uh with and even start new relationships. And I think this is the most important thing about our technology. We're not trying to replace human friends. We're trying to create a completely different type of friendship that then will help people foster and improve their relationships in real life. So I, I want to build on that because you had to spin out a new app, uh for specific use cases of replica. Can you elaborate on that? Yes. Uh Since we were pretty much the first conversational A I product that came out, uh, you know, in 2016, uh So we were the first product of this type, the first A I friend like product and we've kind of been around for a while. Uh As the only one out there, a lot of people came to us with all sorts of different use cases. So we've seen people coming to replica, wanting to build a romantic relationship and try to date. Uh na I, we've seen people come with, um some needs to basically talk to a coach, a therapist almost. Uh We've seen that as well. Uh And we've seen people trying to, you know, build kind of go on fantasy adventures with replica and so on. And so we decided that replica shouldn't be, it's very hard to develop it as a one like an everything friend that has all of these use cases together. So we decided to take some of them out and build a dedicated app for that. Uh We started with Blush, which is uh N I dating app where you can think of it as Tinder with a bunch of virtual humans and virtual uh characters that you can try dating and live match and see, you know, who, who is good for you, who is not. This is really to practice dating, to practice, you know, putting yourself out there to, basically to help people understand that they're worthy of love and they can be out there and uh you know, try this for themselves. And then we're also working um on an app that's gonna be released in the day of this month or beginning of the next month, which is a mental wellness coach and really thinking, how can you put together multimodal A I uh metaverse 3d environments together to create a very beautiful place that can help people feel better, work through their problems, feel inspired, maybe even have a little bit of a spiritual awakening through A I. Do we have more questions? We have a question right here at the front. Hi, I'm Mark from Fast Company. I, I was interested in what you said uh about um using replica as a way to get people ready to sort of repo their human relationships. And I wonder if you could say a little bit more about why you think that is, what is it about the experience of talking to a synthetic entity that uh gets people ready, ready to pick up the phone and call a long lost relative or something like that. Thank you for this question. We haven't actually discovered anything new uh about this. We're pretty much using and building on top of the ideas that were uh uh that that appeared in, in, in, in the middle of the 20th century with the psycho, mostly with the psychologist like Carl Rogers, where they basically um discovered that the, the main way to help people grow and feel better over time is to create uh a relationship that will, will allow them to, to, to grow. So giving people unconditional positive regard uh creating a space where they can feel accepted but also feel like they can be themselves um And they can grow. Um And since then, that pretty much changed how psychology works. Um Modern psychology is all built on top of Carl Rogers ideas and other um and other psychologists of, of this group. Um And this is what the, this was the main premise of replicas. How how can we create a relationship where people can feel heard and truly deeply seen so that then they can, you know, get out of their shell, start growing and start building these relationships outside of the app, Stefanos. Can you comment on like, how do you think about ethics? Um and kind of data privacy and data privacy is a very big issue. So uh uh that's why we work with uh you know, uh uh concrete data sets from businesses that we don't share with anybody else. And I think this is what provides also value. So our boat doesn't hallucinate, it provides real time data and, and, and all that stuff. So data privacy is the number one thing that people are uh you know, uh worry, worry about when, when we talk to them about our solution. So, and when you, when if someone's conversing with Sophia, can the conversation go into like a love conversation or do you? No, we constrain it into a sales, you know, environment. Have people tried? Yeah, I'll send them to replica. Yeah. Um So, but one thing that is really important is that this conversation are very long. Uh You'll be surprised people are, are exchanging 2030 messages with a bot. And uh the, the thing that we didn't know at the beginning and it's really important to us now is that the data that we're uh getting from this conversation. So we are able to go back to, let's say an online retailer, tell them like for this person, his budget is this, he, he has like two sons, whatever a ton of data that they can use later to rear do a bunch of stuff to, to their customers. So uh not only our board helps convert customers, but it helps pass the data back to the business, which is very, very valuable, but no, it's constrained on the sales environment. So if the question is like, you know, a question that would be a replica would and probably how about you, how, how do you think about ethics um including data privacy? Well, you have your own guard rails, first of all, right, um Mr mentioned, but um in the business that we're in, we typically are working with large enterprises and in that context, they have concerns around brand, voice, regulatory compliance, et cetera. So in a way, not that we don't worry about ethics, but ethics are something that big is baked into the process legally. Um And otherwise, and, and, and can you comment on like you're, you're, you're leveraging emotions to influence and motivate people's behaviors which, which can be misused. So how do you, how do you kind of navigate that line? I think it's one thing to get someone to buy another pair of jeans versus convince them to, you know, join the mob, right? And so I think it's simply the application of where this technology is directed, but it is powerful because people generally, as we've seen in our, even our political environment respond to emotion. And so it has to be used judiciously. What are some of the most powerful emotions that drive action, excitement, safety and what we've on safety? Yeah, what we've seen is that, for example, in a low interest interest rate environment versus a high interest rate environment where there's more stress people gravitate towards things that evoke safety certainty. Whereas in the, you know, prior to 18 months ago, it was more, you know, surprise and excitement and almost these emotions have completely reversed. So the macroeconomic zeitgeist sentiment influences what people will be responsive to fascinating Stefano as we look to the year ahead, what gets you most excited, uh you know, progressing on, you know, our A I models uh and building something that really works for a lot of customers, it sounds easy. It's a very complex problem. Uh But we're very excited about all the problems that's happening on the generative A I and we believe that this is the future of how businesses are going to communicate with customers. It's 24 7 always on. It's sometimes better than people. So we can provide a lot of value to businesses. So we're very excited about it and a lot more patient and can answer questions. Yes. Yeah. How about you? What do you, what are you most interested excited about for the future? I think it's the application broadly of A I in places that we haven't seen before. And uh that's sort of a general statement, but specifically, you know, some of the stuff that we're hearing on the stage here where people are, you know, you mentioned the pandemic or epidemic rather of loneliness. Um That's sort of innately built into us. We don't want to be alone because we're social creatures and the ability to ease that pain and suffering is tremendous and I heartened by what I've heard, you know, on the stage here, Eugenie a lot about you. What, what are you most excited about? Definitely multimodal A I being able to finally recreate something we've all seen in the movies. Like for instance, the movie uh Blade Runner, the, the latest one with Joy, the hologram. That's right there with you cooking dinner, watching Netflix. And that you can introduce your friends that can recognize them in real life. That can be part of a conversation, sit with you at dinner table. I think this is uh a wonderful future that we have not yet been able to see and we hope to be the first ones to build it. Amazing. Well, thank you so much to our panelists. Looking forward to multimodal A I tap bots. Thank you.