Artificial human companion
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Artificial human companions have been proposed as one means of assisting the elderly in maintaining an acceptable standard of life. Senior citizens make up an increasing percentage of the population in the Western nations, and, according to Judith Masthoff of the University of Brighton, they tend to live alone and have a limited social network. Studies also show that those elderly living in such circumstances have an increased risk of developing depression and dementia, and have a shorter life span than more socially connected seniors.
It has been known to gerontologists for some time that pets, particularly those such as cats and dogs, which exhibit a range of behaviors and "emotions", help prevent depression in the elderly, and studies also show some beneficial results from electronic pets such as Sony's Aibo and Omron's NeCoRo. However, the therapeutic value of such artificial pets remains limited by the capabilities of technology.
Television viewing among the elderly represents a significant percentage of how their waking hours are spent, and the percentage increases directly with age. Seniors typically watch TV to avoid loneliness, yet TV limits social interaction, thus creating a vicious circle.
It is Masthoff's contention that it is possible to develop an interactive, personalized form of television which would allow the viewer to engage in natural conversation and learn from its conversations.
Such applications have been with us for decades. The earliest, such as the "psychologist" program ELIZA, did little more than identify key words and feed them back to the user. At the beginning of the 21st century, languages such as AIML allow developers to create artificial interfaces whose conversations are, if well-crafted, almost indistinguishable from human conversation. At this time, these conversations are very narrow in scope, but are sufficiently sophisticated that these chatterbots (aka. chatbots) are gaining acceptance by business as front-end telephone receptionists or online website assistants.
While much work remains to be done to develop an interface which can converse in a meaningful and interesting manner, the authoring tools are in place for such an endeavor.
