LLMs need to be more kale

A couple of weeks ago, Gary Marcus’s newsletter flagged a company (Inqwire) that had a statement on their frontpage, stating that they do not use LLMs*, and adding that they do not pretend to be using humans when they use chatbots. Inqwire’s positioning is the complete opposite of pseudo-AI, in which companies sell certain services (e.g., … Continue reading LLMs need to be more kale

Researching and shaping the future of AI-Powered Service Interactions

Last month, I had the honour of delivering a keynote talk, at the Digital Marketing Colloquium, on the topic of “Researching and shaping the future of AI-Powered Service Interactions”. I explored the challenges and opportunities of doing research in this field, driven by a question that a colleague asked me back in 2018, and which has informed … Continue reading Researching and shaping the future of AI-Powered Service Interactions

The AI Dancefloor revisited: adoption of Generative AI

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (AZ) shared insights from interviews and surveys that they conducted with Fortune 500 companies about adoption of Generative AI. While we need to treat the AZ findings with care, because the company did not disclose details of the methodology and has vested interests in the information shared, the article still provides … Continue reading The AI Dancefloor revisited: adoption of Generative AI

Accountability for chatbot errors: Air Canada’s legal battle

When Air Canada’s chatbot gave wrong information to a customer, and the customer complained, the airline argued that it was not responsible for the chatbot’s mistakes. They tried to get away from honouring the wrong information provided by the chatbot, saying that the customer should have consulted the company’s website instead. Canadian courts disagreed, and … Continue reading Accountability for chatbot errors: Air Canada’s legal battle

Conversations with AI – Where functional meets emotional value

BBC News has an interesting article about AI, entitled “The AI companions you can have conversations with”. These “AI companions” are a form of conversational AI which, like Alexa, can interact with users through voice recognition and natural language processing. However, unlike Alexa, they can also recognise emotion and use empathy to craft their interactions. … Continue reading Conversations with AI – Where functional meets emotional value

A framework to decide whether and how to use generative AI chatbots

Since the early days of Open AI’s release of ChatGPT 3.5, many voices have alerted to the fact that, while generative AI tools produce very convincing answers, they are also prone to making up information. This propensity is referred to as hallucination. Concerns over generative AI’s propensity for hallucination are almost as prevalent as enthusiasm for … Continue reading A framework to decide whether and how to use generative AI chatbots

Thoughts on the privacy threats and personalisation opportunities of qualitative inference with large language models

I have come across the paper entitled “Beyond Memorization: Violating Privacy Via Inference with Large Language Models”, authored by Robin Staab, Mark Vero, Mislav Balunović and Martin Vechev. Staab and his team investigated “whether current LLMs could violate individuals' privacy by inferring personal attributes from text”. Using prompts and techniques that, to me, seem quite … Continue reading Thoughts on the privacy threats and personalisation opportunities of qualitative inference with large language models

[Miscellany]: Failing to foresee the current state of AI; AI replacing vs augmenting jobs; and regulation of AI in the EU

Failing to foresee the current state of AI The last 14 months or so have seen incredible change in AI technology. AI has progressed beyond a level that many analysts thought it would take many years – or, indeed, many decades – to achieve. In this blog post, Scott Aaronson, who is a computer scientist at … Continue reading [Miscellany]: Failing to foresee the current state of AI; AI replacing vs augmenting jobs; and regulation of AI in the EU

The trend for yearly recaps

At this time of the year, digital services “gift” to their users personalised statistics about the previous 12 or so months of engagement with their services. From Spotify's Wrapped to Duolingo’s Year in Review, Fitbit’s Year in Review to Goodreads’ Your Year in Books, these yearly recaps offer users a reflective view of their experiences … Continue reading The trend for yearly recaps

Leveraging AI in Customer Interfaces: Insights from Consumer Perception Research

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing customer interface through chatbots, voice assistants, and other conversational agents. As these technologies become more human-like in how they respond to our queries, even adapting to specific speaking styles, it becomes even more important to understand consumer perceptions and responses to these interactions. I want to share with your three papers … Continue reading Leveraging AI in Customer Interfaces: Insights from Consumer Perception Research