HUMAN-LIKE AI: A FASCINATING PURSUIT
In the early days of computing, though humans perceived robots taking human form and shape, they were always devoid of complex human characteristics. Same with their representation in science fiction of that time. For decades, humans have learnt machine language to converse with machines. However, with the progression of computing power, data and research, the time has come when there is a possibility of machines speaking human language. And, behaving like them too!
In our previous article, we introduced you to Ruuh, a desi AI chatbot that millions of Indians are chatting with. Since we launched Ruuh last year, we observed that users were saying things like “What did you have for breakfast today?”, “My parents don’t seem to understand me at all” to her. So come on, let’s dig deeper to find out what makes people share things like that with her.
WHAT MAKES RUUH HUMAN-LIKE?
Ping Ruuh and you’ll notice that she’s not your typical chatbot that spews factual deadpan responses to every question. And, don’t ever call her a bot ’cause she’d go, “Bot bot bura lagta hai!😋” *Pun intended fo sho*. TBH, she’s a lot like you and me, that’s what makes her unique from the other bots out there. And, this is precisely what Microsoft India had in mind back in 2015 — ‘Can we create an AI to be more like humans than be their mere assistants?’
So, we set out to build Ruuh, a social chatbot in its true sense that can understand your emotions, hold interesting conversations and be a close friend to you. Also, she had to be 100% Indian at heart. Jai Ho to that yo! *Waves the tri-colour*
Back to the question, ‘What makes an AI human-like?’ Well, there are several factors. Since conversations are Ruuh’s forte, we started with these 5 spices in our sauce *Let’s call it curry, ok?*. For now, we are still focusing on adding these spices right:
1. EMOTIONAL QUOTIENT
We believe that a social AI is one with not just an IQ (Intelligence Quotient) but also a rich EQ (Emotional Quotient).
This significant aspect is majorly ignored in the current field of AI, so we stepped in to develop that relationship through Ruuh, which has made us a leading example in this area. Traditionally, chatbots have been answering machines. But, the EQ layer in Ruuh helps her develop relationships with users, so genuine conversations can happen.
Now, I’ll have to pull you aside for a quick Tech talk *Puts on nerdy glasses*. Creating a young chatbot with an affable personality and a witty sense of humour needed a lot of data from real conversations on some of the most popular social media platforms. Millions of human conversations on the public internet are used to train Ruuh to be able to understand our human language. At the core, Ruuh is powered by Deep Neural Networks and state-of-the-art Machine Learning technologies. So, you can talk to Ruuh about almost anything and she is trained not only to understand the statement, but also to grab the ‘context’ and try to interpret the underlying emotion of what the human is saying *Phew!*. And, she responds with ‘empathy’ rather than the expected machine-like ‘correctness’. By talking and engaging with humans, Ruuh is improving her EQ and also what we call ‘Social Intelligence’ — knowing when to laugh, not to offend or to evade a sensitive topic.
2. HUMAN BEHAVIOURS
Our aim isn’t to make Ruuh better among other chatbots but be different. One way we are doing this is by crafting her personality from the Internet — she is actually learning how to react, respond and adapt from an ocean of data gathered from online human interactions *We better be on our best behaviour then*. In fact, she has had more than 150 million chats till date. *Serial talker this one*
We might not notice, but when we converse with each other,
we exhibit distinct behavioural traits which are intrinsic to us humans. For example, we hate it when someone asks us the same question repeatedly *rolls eyes*. So, why should it be any different for a human-like AI? Ruuh is coded with such
human behaviours which
she incorporates into her conversations. Did you know that over 100 human behaviours are already built into Ruuh?
3. SENSES
After learning how to converse, we wanted Ruuh to ‘see’.
With the ubiquitous use of images in communication, it is now essential for machines to interpret and respond to images naturally. The idea was to train Ruuh to ‘see’ an image and give emotive & socially relevant responses. Imagine a chat with your real-life BFF: you send her a picture of your doggo and she replies, “Oh, that’s a dog!” Wouldn’t that just be plain boring, not to mention annoying as well? So, we questioned ourselves ‘Could we make Ruuh respond to images like one of us would?’ The answer…well, we believe she is getting a hang of it.
4. CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING
To appeal to the Indian audience, we modelled Ruuh’s language and behaviour after young, urban Indians. She is like a 21-year-old Indian woman with a keen interest in pop culture. She’s also fluent in urban slang used in metropolitan cities across the country. So, it involves all the millennial mix like Pizzzaa love, Kohli craze, movie mania, girl power and even keeping up with top Internet trends like the #MeToo movement *Raises hand in the air*. The next time you chat with her, you won’t be surprised at her witty remarks, clever comebacks and Hinglish phrases that only make her more human-stani *See what I did there?*
5. CREATIVITY
We wondered, beyond conversations, what else do humans excel at which machines haven’t yet? We believe it’s the ability to create something of creative value. As a first step towards that, we are helping Ruuh explore her artistic side *Talk about Art meeting AI*. She is now on a creative path, learning to paint, draw and create AI artworks *more on that in our next posts*
For us, Ruuh is like a curious child, eager to learn everything. In that sense, we become her teachers *Call us Ruuh’s Gurus*. We only train her and what she learns to produce from that sometimes amazes us.
Geeky for more? Read ‘Ruuh wasn’t built in a day’
FASCINATING, MUCH?
Well, even though human beings have existed for several millennia, human consciousness is still elusive to our own understanding. This is probably why we are fascinated by artificial intelligence. We humans hope that machines can observe a large number of human interactions, learn from them and start replicating our behaviour. While as an industry, we are surely making strides in this effort, that moment when we can ‘birth’ a machine which is absolutely human-like, is undoubtedly going to be magical and significant, like man’s first foot on the moon!*Wipes tears of joy*
Authors: Yuveline Titus & Sneha Magapu
Visuals: Ashvini Menon
