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Meet the robot that pretends to listen to you

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Meet the robot that pretends to listen to you
There is a robot that pretends to listen to your every conversation just in a bid to keep you company.
Even those who spend a large proportion of their working lives pretending to listen (VCs being some of the most well-rehearsed) must still feel unconvincing from time to time. After all, human beings are social animals. Faking it doesn’t come naturally.
However, when you engage with a group of CommU robots for the first time — the latest creation by world-renowned Japanese roboticist, Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro — it becomes apparent pretty darn quickly just how easy it is to feign interest in someone else’s conversation.
TechCrunch caught up with Dr. Ishiguro at the Extension of Humanity event at SXSW Interactive 2016 in Austin, Texas. While he may not be a household name, anyone with even a passing interest in robotics and AI should be aware of just how much Ishiguro, the director at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University in Japan, has accomplished in his field.
Ishiguro was in the Lone Star State to promote a number of his products and prototypes, including a small, rather unimpressive-looking robot named the CommU (short for Communication Unity).
This isn’t one of Ishiguro’s most advanced AI prototypes, but the CommU’s relatively simple design demonstrates a key aspect of the modern human condition: group dynamics. In doing so, however, Ishiguro has also inadvertently shown how easy it is to pretend to listen.
In its simplest terms, the CommU, which looks like a creepy baby, is 11 inches in height, and ideally come in pairs of two or more. Ishiguro is quick to point out that the bigger the group, the more realistic the communication exchange. The robots are programmed to “talk” to each other on a number of topics; when observing from afar, there does appear to be a real conversation taking place.
When the group senses the presence of a human, they are programmed to engage with them and involve them in their exchange.
“If you have two or more robots having a conversation with each other and suddenly a human joins the group, the CommU will recognize the human is talking and say something along the lines of: ‘What do you think?’” he says. “When you answer, the robots will say, ‘I see’ or ‘Interesting,’ then return to their own ‘conversation.’ They don’t understand what the human is saying. The CommU simply demonstrates the dynamics of group communication.”
But with two or more, a convincing communication exchange in a group setting happens — even though the robots cannot understand the human.
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