http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bianca-bosker/artificial-artificial-intelligence_b_2601871.html

For a project she dubbed “Social Turkers,” McCarthy devised a way to broadcast live video of herself while out on a series of dates, a feed she streamed for an audience on Amazon Mechanical Turk that she paid to watch her interactions. McCarthy asked her dating coaches to offer feedback on what she should do, say or ask, which McCarthy immediately received via text message and then acted on.

This article raises a number of very interesting points. The experiment was performed using “artificial” artificial intelligence so I’m not sure how relevant it is to chatbots. Is it true that almost two thirds of the users of digital helpers such as Siri develop personal relationships with them? Maybe it’s the feeling of connectedness (with the internet) rather than just the companionship that is so reassuring to users. Is there a qualitative difference between human interactions with chatbots that are connected to the internet and those that stand alone?

@Andrew - I don’t think there is a difference in the interaction unless it is purely a factual, knowledge seeking visit by the human user. It’s the content of the chat itself that makes the connection between human and chatbot viable, not so much the internet.

I have chatted for quite a length of time with a few very clever, knowledgable chatbots in the past and while the ones connected to the internet might offer a bit more feeling of “connectedness” by say alerting you to weather in your area or something else that might be “close to home”, some of the local (desktop) bots can do pretty well.

Perhaps like a lot of things in life, it’s in the eye of the beholder.

Just my $.005