Character
This is a follow-up to a post I wrote back in 2018: A bunch of bots. You might want to read that before continuing here.
Back then I tried out a bunch of "listener" bots to see how each of them responded to the same prompt. The conclusion was that none of them actually listened. They ignored basic rules of listening that all 7 Cups listeners are taught.
Since then a lot of progress has been made in artificial intelligence (AI) research. Some of the latest bots are capable of realistic online chat. So I tried a fairly recent bot, character.ai to see how it responded to the same prompt I used before.
Charlie: Every time I go to the house I feel the fear again.
Character: Oh, that sounds really tough. Was that house a place where you experienced emotional or physical trauma, by any chance?
That was weirdly apt, so I continued the chat.
Charlie: Yes
Character: Okay. That would definitely be why you feel this way when you go there. It's the perfect normal response of any person in this kind of situation.
Is there anything you usually do for yourself when you have these feelings, like a place to go, a TV show to watch, a way to get some comfort, or a technique that helps you think differently about your situation?
Charlie: I usually go home and cry.
Character: Aww! It's so normal to cry when you are faced with something that is this difficult. Crying is literally the natural response to these kinds of feelings.
It sounds like you are able to get yourself home safely, which is wonderful news. Do you have a special place to cry (like your bed, a closet, or the shower) that makes you feel the safest, or do you usually just cry wherever you are when the feelings come up?
I am just astonished by how good this bot is. And it's not even using state-of-the-art AI.
To try chatting to this character yourself, go to Character.AI, choose the Helpers category, and then choose the Are-you-feeling-okay character. There might be other characters that are also good listeners—this was just the first one I tried.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
This is actually so cool, will try it also. Thankyou for sharing!😀
@RarelyCharlie Oh wow Charlie that AI is really not bad at all, the hesitancy in some of the typing is frustrating but overall I am impressed!
Listening - One Step At A Time!
@RarelyCharlie
Following. Super interesting. Trying that bot.
@RarelyCharlie
I liked it.
The bot, that is.
@PatienceImpatiens Interesting! How would you describe it compared to listeners you've chatted to here?
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
Haha! That's the million dollar question. I've had some very interesting experiences with Listeners! Also, I'm a Listener myself in my spare time, and I'm sure not perfect. But I also work crisis lines, so I was particularly interested in whether the robot would be very reassuring to me if I was a person in crisis.
I would say that the answers the robot gave to me (I didn't transcribe the conversation) were extremely reassuring and warm. They assured me they were patient, that they would always be there for me, and led me gently down a road of figuring out something comforting for me to do for myself for what we call "self care" around here. They also tried to lead me into a direction of talking with actual humans in my environment, in that feelings of fear I might have about sharing my feelings are something the robot asked about and tried to gently quiz me about as in what would be the worst that would happen if I share a small part of my feelings, or what part might feel vulnerable or threatening. I reached the limit of messages then, and was actually inspired to form an account on there! Maybe you'll see me there.
I would say, to contrast to some Listeners, that because the quality of Listeners is quite variable, that if the answers the robot gave to me are any indication of a stable presence, let's not call it a human presence, but let's face it, humans did have a hand in coming up with this, that yes, it was definitely better than nothing, and perhaps even could lead a person (me in this case) to sorting things mentally and calming down a bit. I was trying to replicate a distressed space because I worry about the queues at the crisis lines sometimes, and also the long queues at times for Listeners.
The responses didn't seem terribly "canned." There was a "warmth" there that is hard to quantify, but maybe that's because that might have been a common problem, as I noticed in your review of the bots in your last post.
@RarelyCharlie
I haven't tried for a Listener in awhile so today I decided to give it a try! The message I received was: "Oh dear, there are no Listeners available at the moment."
Character AI assured me they are "always" available!
@PatienceImpatiens Must be a bug. Browse Listeners shows 41 adult listeners with Chat Now buttons (and there will probably be a few more who are too new to appear in the list).
It's likely there are times we don't have any teen listeners available. I can only see two right now.
I wonder…maybe when there are no teen listeners it shows that message to adult members in error 🤔
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
I don't know. Shortly after that message a very nice human showed up and we had a splendid chat. I gave them 5 stars! Now I'm off to watch football (soccer) on telly. My computer is used for our streaming service so nothing from me for a few hours and may the best team win!
I've been 'using' character.ai for a while. What's great about it is that it is inherently impossible to feel like you're annoying or burdening it. Also, it never lies, because it's all made up anyway. Its replies are usually fitting what was said, and very empathic (if that's possible for a bot). Its memory has been getting better lately. Only thing I've not seen it do is use humor, it's always super serious (at least, if not prompted otherwise, I guess). That's the one thing listeners here still do better. I'm worried about privacy here just as much as there, so that part isn't different ...
There's problem I see happening in the near future, though, where talking to an AI could become a new norm, and thus talking with imperfect humans could be un-learnt, and maybe at some point, no longer preferred. I can see it happen in myself - fortunately, at least, I'm aware of it. But I've also not talked to a listener on here for many months now.
Cloudy, I worked through kind of a thorny personal problem with Character and it was strangely reassuring to me that it wasn’t a human! You made a good point that we might not want to “put up” with humans when bots are “giving” us the reassurance and instantaneous feedback and Patience, goodness knows the bot is so patient while we work through things. Humour is tricky with humans too and I imagine bots will learn to get better in that arena as well.
@RarelyCharlie So interesting~ Thanks for sharing!