How human-like are the most sophisticated chatbots?

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Over the past few days, there has been a lot of attention on the subject after a Google engineer claimed that the firm's most advanced system has become sentient.

A chat bot is a program that mimics and responds to human speech.

How realistic are they? Virtual assistants are now found everywhere.

80% of us now use chatbots, whether they are responding to us verbal or written.

A student at York University in Toronto, Canada, is typical of many people in that she is used to using chatbot on a daily basis

She consults with her university's Savy system, via her mobile phone, to find required college information, and she also has Amazon's voice assistant at home.

Image source, Sabina Goranova

Savy was created for York and its students. It can answer questions in a matter of minutes.

Ms Goranova says she appreciates the convenience of chatbot. Savy is one of the tools in my toolkit.

The chief executive of the French firm Mindsay is Guillaume Laporte. Everyone from Nike to Walmart is a customer of itss.

He says that chatbots are starting to mimic real human behavior.

Mr Laporte says that after initial programming, and using machine learning and artificial intelligence, they can learn and understand what the user is saying, and thus know what to reply.

He cautions that there still needs to be a human backup in place for industry-wide chatbot. Different companies and industries have differing understanding rates. It can be between 30% and 10%.

Image source, Arthur De Tassigny

Jim Smith is a professor at the University of the West of England.

It's important to distinguish between task-orientated ones delivering a service and ones that are expected to have a wider chat about things.

He says that the ones most used are the ones that can work well. They are taught how to use mass and text.

They can achieve human-like levels of customer service if they are in a call center. It's important that the caller knows that he or she is not talking to a human.

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They can seem convincing to start, but they are doing statistics to work out what they should be saying to you next, and errors can keep increasing.

It is hard to measure what is a human-like performance if the systems get very good. Pets seem to be talking to you.

I don't think it's worth saying that a chatbot is sentient. You can turn it off and on again.

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Prof Wachter is a senior research fellow in the field of artificial intelligence.

We have to think about ethical responsibilities as we move forward. "Botanicals might look like they are chatting with real humans." It can lead to harm if we don't avoid this confusion.

It leads to frustration when chatting with the bot due to their limited capabilities. We might trust them and give them information that we wouldn't give to someone else.

Image source, Sandra Wachter

IBM's global chief artificial intelligence officer spoke about the benefits of chat bot. They increased their use to pass on important health messages during the coronaviruses epidemic.

He suggests taking the National Health Service Wales for example. "In 2020, they launched a virtual agent, Ceri, to answer common questions from citizens in a conversation tone, on topics ranging from isolating safely and effectively, protecting yourself and family members, managing symptoms like fatigue, and more."

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People just want to talk to a human whenever they want. Stuart Duff is a psychologist and Pearn Kandola is one.

He says that many people don't like chatbot because they try too hard to be human. Building trust with other people is dependent on transparency, empathy and the ability to pick up on subtle tones in our communication.

These are the reasons why we can click. If people don't empathise with us, we put up our guard.

"They are still basic programmed communicators, prone to misinterpret (or just miss) important words, tone and humour in what we are saying," he said.

Will Smale is the editor of the new tech economy series.