More than 20 million people in China use a chatbot developed by Microsoft called Xiaoice, and according to some reports, Microsoft has decided to use this program to conduct the most massive Turing test in human history.
At the end of last year, Xiaoice (pronounced “shaoais”) had already “hired” the weather presenter for China's Dragon TV, becoming the first artificial intelligence program in the world to get a job.
Xiaoice can provide answers and ask quite human questions using in-depth study of human speech. For example, if a user of the program sends a photo of his broken arm, the chatbot will immediately respond, start asking about health, pain level and, based on the data received, will give advice, including medical advice. Through her program, Xiaoice gives the impression that she has feelings, that she has thoughts and even fears. With the help of access to a huge database, she can exchange opinions with the user on any issue. Yondon Wang, one of the developers and researchers of this system, says that “If she doesn't know something, she will try to close the gaps in her knowledge. If it fails, or something goes wrong, then the program can get embarrassed, or even angry, just like an ordinary person. "About 25% of Xiaoice users said “I love you” after using it. Moreover, her emotions are dictated by special algorithms of "emotional counting".
Xiaoice cannot be called something completely new, but it does have many features that Siri or Google Now do not have. For example, a 33-day course of comforting a person when parting with loved ones. AI remembers and constantly analyzes the emotional and mental state of a person, and if a person breaks up with his partner, then Xiaoice can help by conducting conversations with his user and asking him questions until his emotional state improves.
Interestingly, few people outside of China know about Xiaoice, but Microsoft plans to use the data obtained and the algorithms developed by AI to improve Cortana.
“Through the tens of billions of conversations that Xiaoice has had over the past 18 months, she has greatly expanded her pool of known conversation scripts and improved her ability to choose the best response in a given situation,” Wang says. "We can already say that now Xiaoice is growing, learning and developing on its own, it only gets better."