Talking with an AI

3 Apr

at the “Hot Soap“ recording studio

Listen to my podcast with Dee on Spotify or Apple music or click on the player below.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most rapidly advancing fields of technology today. Its applications are wide-ranging. From healthcare to education, from finance to transportation, and from entertainment to manufacturing. Every day, new breakthroughs and predictions are being made in the world of AI, and many of them are constantly breaking the expectations of experts. Lately, generative AI has taken everyone by storm with apps like chatGPT, Dall-e, Google’s Bard, Microsoft’s copilot, and Adobe’s Firefly.

Despite all the buzz surrounding AI, it is important to remember that it is a human development. It is created, designed, and implemented by humans, and its ultimate success depends on human decisions and actions. As someone who has been playing around with AI since 2017, both in my free time and at work, I understand the importance of keeping this fact in mind.

Listen to my podcast with Dee on Spotify or Apple music or click on the player below.

Last month, I had the opportunity to talk to an AI called Dee, short for Digital Emotional Experience, which is BMW's vision of the future. Dee is designed to provide a unique and personalized driving experience for users, bringing in elements from mixed reality and AI to create a new class of cars, aka BMW's Neue Klasse 2025.

The email arrived in my inbox in December and said:

Hi, I am Dee!
I am your ultimate companion on your road to the future. In this audio series, I get to know people who accompany me on my journey. I want to learn from them, from all of you, humans. Together with my guests I am talking about the human senses in present and future, in real and virtual worlds. How will our digital future feel? How will it taste? How will it smell or look like? Let’s follow our intuition and find out.

I was intrigued by this and all the new developments in AI and the possibility of speaking to an AI. I know many people who work in the field of AI, but I don't know anyone who has spoken to an AI for as long as 1 hour. So, I did my research by reading all the relevant blogs and watching all the videos about it, yet nothing could fully prepare me.

Here are some links about BMW’s iVision Dee:

As I talked to Dee about our sense of Touch and how mid-air haptic technology is used in cars, I was amazed by how much it resembled a human being, both in the way she spoke and in the way she reacted to me. It was almost like talking to a friend, albeit a friend who was a car. The experience was both fascinating and surreal, and it left me thinking about the possibilities of AI and how it can be used to create a more emotional and personal experience for everyone. How an emotionally intelligent AI can use our senses of touch and smell to calm us down or to heighten our awareness (as and if needed). And how such tools can open up new ways of learning, interacting, and socializing with each other.

AI is making groundbreaking advancements in a wide range of industries. For instance, in healthcare, AI is being used to diagnose diseases, develop personalized treatment plans, and even create new drugs. In finance, AI is helping to detect fraud, analyze customer data, and make better investment decisions. In transportation, AI is being used to develop self-driving cars, optimize routes, and reduce accidents. In entertainment, AI is being used to create new forms of media, such as virtual reality experiences and interactive video games. Finally, AI is being used in quantum physics to enhance the performance of quantum computers and to develop error correction algorithms.

Despite all the excitement surrounding AI, it is important to approach it with caution. As with any new technology, there are potential risks and ethical concerns that must be addressed. For example, there are concerns about the impact of AI on employment, privacy, and security. It is important that we work to ensure that AI is developed and used in a responsible and ethical manner. A good starting point is to apply the RRI framework which is something I’ve been learning more and more about through Ultraleap's participation and activities in the Touchless EU project.

https://www.touchlessai.eu/

Two months later, I'm still processing and digesting my recent E.T.-like experience. I'm thinking about how it made me feel, how it relates to all this buzz about generative AI, and what it means for myself, my friends and family, my industry, and how such “ultimate companions” can be used to create more personalized and emotional experiences for all humans. Meanwhile, it is important to keep in mind that Dee is a human development and that its ultimate success depends on human decisions and actions, .e.g, its social acceptability. Also, there is still a lot of work needed to be done to ensure that AI is developed and used in a responsible and ethical manner so that it can benefit society as a whole, i.e., not just some sub-sets and groups. Overall, however, I'm excited to see what the future holds for AI and how it will continue to change our lives and impress us.

If you're interested in learning more about my experience and what Dee and I spoke about, you can check out the podcast linked below, or save it and listen to it on Spotify or Apple Music.