Humanity.ai 2017 Videos: Character and Conversation

By Sydney Ledger

Humanity.ai Video collections: [Chatbots | Character | The Future]

When we think of robots, we often start to think of characters from movies and cultural icons. The Terminator. Wall E. R2-D2. But as we start to build bots, Alexa skills, VR characters, and more, we seem to forget that we’re not just writing, we’re creating a character. Our Humanity.ai speakers schooled us in storytelling and character development and then asked some compelling questions to make us think twice about our choices as we start to create our own.

PullString and Computer Conversation

Oren Jacob (Co-Founder and CEO — PullString)

We now live in a world of computer conversations and for the first time, the Human-Computer Relationship is in a language that is ours, not theirs. So how do we make these conversations more natural? Oren hammers home that character is not algorithmically derived and shares PullString’s tips and tools to help build an experience that your audience keeps coming back to.

AI in Film and Storytelling

Moderator Chen Shen — Capital One), Jay Shuster (Production Designer — Pixar), Karen Dufilho-Rosen (Executive Producer — Google Spotlight), Rebecca Stockley (Co-Founder, BATS Improv), + Mark Walsh (CEO — Motional)

John Lasseter of Pixar once said, “The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.” When art and technology meet, magical things can happen, much like this panel of filmmakers, producers, designers, and comedians. From their favorite AI characters, to assigning gender to virtual assistants, and perception of robots, this panel turned our idea of character on its head.

Removing the Sociopath from AI

Mark Walsh (Animator — Pixar, Motional.ai)

Customers want their brands to care, to become extensions of themselves and AI promises to deepen that customer relationship. But there’s a problem: AI is a digital sociopath — it neither collects nor projects emotion. Nobody wants to do business with a sociopath.

Mark is hell bent on eliminating the sociopath within AI and see Character Intelligence (CI) as the future. Using emotional sensitivity to drive an authentic response, we can enable businesses to emulate their best customer service employee, not a sociopath.

Browse all the talks and panels from Humanity.ai on the ONE Design Vimeo account.