Below some quotes from Jeremy Wagstaff from Wall Street Journal. More in here. This is an interesting dillemma: productivity (and info discernment; see Linda Stone) versus authenticity.
Using cyber doubles we can interact and scan more efficiently while at the same time we are losing control and our own authenticity, albeit marginally due to the almost perfect online copies of our real personalities. What does it to ones' reputation (both individually as well as corporate) when people or users find out that their conversation with you was fake (and this was not announced by the chatbot before the conversation started) ? In my view the reaction depends on the specific context. On a personal level this might be less acceptable compared to the corporate setting. In my view using chatbots to save time for your personal live is a lack of (emotional) commitment to others while corporate bots can be justified by being (rationally) relevant and efficient.
However, I do believe in Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web enabling personal advisors or agents acting on our behalf, but in my view that is different from the statements below. Those 3.0 agents focus on the individual and not on the conversations with other people.
To me MyCyberTwin is particularly interesting due to the fact that it is a transformative tool (see Joseph Pine II and this link on different other examples of Transformation) to gain self awareness. What is your own communication style ? Which patterns do you use unconsciously ? This tool makes the invisble visible, thereby allowing for personal growth.
"Expect a future where we don't interact with other
people. Instead, we'll send our "cyber double" out to interact with
other people's "cyber doubles" until things get interesting. Then, and
only then, will real people take over. This is the vision of Liesl Capper, whose Sydney-based RelevanceNow! last week launched an early version of MyCyberTwin (mycybertwin.com),
a service that allows you to create and hone an online version of
yourself. Your cyber twin will then chat on your behalf on instant
messaging, your blog or your MySpace page. Eventually much of what you
do online will be left to your cyber double, indistinguishable from the
real thing (you). As Ms. Capper puts it: "You can be you, even when
you're not you."
Ms. Capper, armed with a degree in psychology, has
with her business partner John Zakos taken what she says is a different
tack: looking at the human side by measuring personality traits with
psychometric testing, in order to generate a person's likely responses
to questions, so that person's cyber twin can mimic that person better.
This, Ms. Capper says, not only makes the replies more lifelike, it
allows people to quickly generate and personalize their own cyber twins. Which
is pretty much where MyCyberTwin stands now. Answer 80 questions and
the software does a pretty good job of describing your character. Once
that's done, you can tweak your cyber twin's responses further by
feeding it content from your own emails, records of instant-message
chats or blog posts, and it will, Ms. Capper says, sound like you. Some
of these features aren't available yet, but Ms. Capper says that in
initial tests "we're finding that a fairly large population don't know
if they're talking to a real person or a cyber twin." My own tests
suggest she's onto something, but still has some way to go."
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