Today, I listened to an episode of Cautionary Tales titled “The Online Date That’s Too Good to be True” (listen and find show notes here). I initially thought this was going to be an episode on the dangers of online dating, but it turned out to be an episode on chatbots and what it means to be human.
Something Tim Harford said during the show struck me: that we humans sometimes talk like robots. He mentioned three types of chatbots who speak in similar ways to humans:
- Eliza: the chatbot that asks questions and lets you talk, but who doesn’t vounteer anything about herself
- Converse: the chatbot that only talks about their pet topic
- MGonz: the chatbot who only hurls insults at you (this chatbot managed to carry on a conversation for 1h and 15 min with an unsuspecting participant)
The problem, as Harford points out, is not that chatbots are amazing at human speech, it’s that we humans often carry out these robot-like ways of talking. To ‘speak like a human’ may be to speak like a chatbot.
In light of this episode, I wanted to point back to two books that I’ve read on being a better conversationalist:
- You’re not listening by Kate Murphy: Yes, I know it’s a bit ironic to put in a book on listening in a post on speaking, but a good conversation involves listening well, something that chatbots do not do. The point on not being distracted is particularly pertinent for me; I have a habit of letting my mind wander, which is not good. (Full review)
- There’s No Good Card for This by Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell: I liked this book because of how it encourages us to reach out to people and illustrates a few pitfalls that we can make in our conversations. The book has made me aware of not making someone’s pain about me when I’m extending my condolences. (Full review)
I’m now interested in the book on chatbots that Harford mentions – it’s called The Most Human Human, which is a very cool title. But since this is a post on conversation, please feel free to start one in the comments or just send me your recommendations for books on how to be a better conversationalist.
I was gonna say, “Oh, heck no!”, but after reading your post, I gotta say sometimes I am …
Guilty! (raises hand)
Same here! I especially like to talk about my areas of interest so I’m sure I sound like the converse chatbot sometimes!
This is so interesting! And it made me think about all times I’ve used a chat feature and not always been sure if I was speaking to a chatbot or a person. Sometimes it’s obvious it’s a chatbot and sometimes I’m wondering if it’s a really good chatbot or a person.
I also know some people who run customer service chats for their jobs, and they have told me that people on the other end are absolutely convinced they are talking to a chatbot! Sometimes this ends up with the person messing around and typing silly things into the chat box “for fun” because they don’t realize they’re wasting a real person’s time. Sometimes it means the person is unintentionally rude, like they’ll suddenly log off and not inform the customer service rep that the conversation is over. This does affect the service rep because they need the logs to show their superiors that they’ve done all the required steps in the interaction, but it’s hard to do the required steps if the person on the other end isn’t playing by the same rules!
I don’t really know where I’m going with this, except to say that, yes, chatbots and humans do seem really similar at times!
Right? I suppose if the humans at the other end have certain scripts that they have to follow, then they might feel like chatbots to us – or maybe we’ve just come to expect chatbots when we type!
I feel for those service reps! It’s definitely not easy doing any type of service job.
New anxiety unlocked: people think I’m a robot 🤖
Hahaha there are probably people out there who think I’m a robot, given that I used to do customer service!
I used to as well 😂