Speaking for a Computer - Part One

The other day, I was described as severely autistic, an actress, a spy, and just in general, completely unaware of social norms.
Before I go much further, maybe I should describe the study I was a part of. It’s a bit complicated for me to try to explain, but I shall try. First, it was loosely based off of Cyrano - ("In fictional works about his life he is featured with an overly large nose, and is in love with the beautiful Roxane, but because of his large nose, he is forced to give his words / poetry to a more conventionally handsome but less articulate “friend” and the beautiful couple fall in love because of Cyrano’s words.")

In this study, the participant was told he was studying what a normal conversation between two people, meeting for the first time, is like. So, they were to have a normal conversation with me for ten minutes – when in fact, I was giving computer-generated responses (i.e., Cyrano’s poetry…).

Because it’s a bit funny, I made a fancy chart -

Basically, I came into the room and said “Hi there” – and then because of a hidden microphone / radio transmitter, everything the person said was heard in another room and typed into a computer program, to which a computer generated a response, which the researcher said aloud, and I heard because of an earbud / radio thing in my ear – like a spy – which I then repeated (speech shadowing) as naturally as I could manage. There’s a lot more to my friend’s PhD study, but this was the most recent part I was helping with. The theory, interpretation, and results are his project. Instead, I wanted to communicate what I felt / experienced.

Sorry, the narrative will be a bit jumpy but it was quite an interesting adventure:

First, of course there were a LOT of funny moments. This would have been incredibly awkward as a participant – I mean, it was awkward for me and I knew what was going on and was only half paying attention by the end. We used three different computer programs in our trials, 

Two of the programs had set ‘personalities’ and backgrounds – so I repeated a lot of stuff. (the other one was completely random) Sometimes I would repeat things over and over in the course of a 10 minute conversation. Such as, I LOVE cheese toasties and will find interesting times to repeatedly bring that up into a conversation. Or, I’m clearly from a small town in north Yorkshire, but now I live in Leeds (and though I am sitting in London, I was in Leeds...). After this, I usually would ask them, while looking directly at them, “Where are you?” which was always funny. They would then try to respond like they thought I must have meant… often, “Oh you mean, where am I living now? I live in London but my family lives … ” Ha. (or, the person said “it is really cold out today” to which I agreed it was. Then the next thing I said was that it was really warm outside… insert confused look)

Also, I talked a lot about my love for Leeds United, I’m a big fan – and when someone commented “why? They aren’t very good” the computer, who had “forgotten” the context already, asked philosophical questions about what it is to be good and could someone become good. It was kind of fun to have no inhibition about asking people serious questions instead of social norm small talk, but it also made people somewhat uncomfortable so I won’t repeat it. BUT – If they ever asked “personal” questions, like “Are you a student?”, the computer / I would say, “That’s an interesting question but I don’t want to talk about it right now. Shall I continue talking about ______, or shall I move on?” Which got interesting responses, especially when I had to repeat it every other sentence. OR when I’d immediately start speaking French. That was funny. It took the computer a bit to sort that out – and then it would insert random words from other languages throughout the conversation… or talk about my thousands of friends, some were ‘famous’ others were ‘ordinary’ up in Leeds (that’s where the famous people live) – and yet not want to expound on who I knew or whatever. I’m a bit of a showoff. It’s valid though, if you’re cool like me I guess.

One of the chatbots got its information from web searches, so often it would be incredibly random – like I’d say a lot about Pokémon or the etymology of words. And then give people lectures about ‘nobody is perfect.’ Once, in the middle of no where, I said: “Imagine. …SPIDERS!” Poor guy. He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Or, after asking a guy if he had a girlfriend and what her name was, and after telling me – I told him I didn’t think that was her name… haha. Then I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, which happened a few times. I was “bored” – and they apologized for boring me, as one would. Can a computer get bored?

One really awkward thing would be the pause between when they asked me an easy question and it took me forever to reply – like: “Are you a student?” … … … … … … …  seriously like thirty seconds later… … … “I don’t know…” or, often I would change my story like three times, I was a student, then I had been graduated for years, etc. The confusion was everywhere. Sometimes, I would just blatantly not answer their questions....

And because I have too much I want to say about this I will end here and continue in part two. Which includes more about how I felt about being a computer person and such... but a few last funny things.