most of the computer-generated
characters we encounter are found in
entertainment like video games those
characters can have rudimentary
artificial intelligence but rarely
interact with us the same way we expect
of real people at USC ICT is a virtual
humans lab researchers are looking at
ways to develop artificial characters
that use language gestures and emotions
in their interactions with us I was
created to talk to people in a safe and
secure environment I'm not a therapist
but I'm here to learn about people and
would love to learn about lido which is
if your question is getting started i
sat down with Ellie a virtual
interviewer which is designed for use in
mental health therapy she's a she's made
to ask questions she's meant to listen
she was created to try to help veterans
coming back from deployment so it
allowed and come back with PTSD or
depression and they're often not caught
they kind of fall through the cracks
Ellie was able to track my behavioral
emotional and even social cues during
our conversation do you consider
yourself more shy or outgoing maybe
right in the middle tell me more about
that
um the first step to creating of useful
virtual character is to study how people
interact using camera data researchers
then run trials with a Wizard of Oz like
technique with puppeteered characters to
develop scripts and algorithms for fully
automated AI systems
another virtual human demo in
development at USC ICT is a bit more
complicated with a goal of creating AI
for negotiation training the virtual
humans here have to make decisions read
emotions and even use deception all of
which require social intelligence sounds
great how do you think we should split
up the atoms all of these intuitive
behavioral norms we learn at a young age
are actually really difficult to program
into AI currently the negotiation agent
can say 5000 things and those all are
verbatim things that the humans we
brought in said in their negotiations
and this negotiation agent that you
interacted with she's still controlled
by wizard in fact two wizards one is
doing the decisions and one is doing the
nonverbal communication the research
done here will have implications far
beyond the therapists office and even
business schools as John grach director
of the virtual humans research at USC
ICT explained to me the AI of autonomous
cars for example will need the ability
to operate in the social environment of
city street traffic and so when I'm
crossing the street in LA I look to that
car and I looked at that driver and I
see does that driver see me before I
cross the street so sort of social
intelligence and so and when I make a
mistake I say oh I'm sorry I'll do
better next time
you know and those are things that I
think fully autonomous systems will have
to incorporate into their capability so
when Google is going to navigate through
new york city streets it has to send
signals somehow oh I see you I see you
social niceties politeness all that kind
of stuff actually serves functions and
relationships it makes communication
more efficient it tells me who I can
trust and as we move away from simple
automation to autonomous systems it has
their own goals and maybe not exactly
the same goal as a human user it becomes
more and more important to
this kind of way that humans deal with
that so the machines can do that as well
I mean those systems are coming I mean
you look at the experiment like this
and you can look at it and say oh you're
trying to replace human human
interactions with humans and computer
actions as a way to scale or make it
more accessible or for education but
what you're talking about is taking
those lessons and putting in autonomous
systems or human-computer interaction
systems that are that need them that
maybe we don't know they need them now
yeah I mean I think in general there's
an interest in computer science and not
replacing people but making machines
like partners with people and and
there's also this idea was called human
centered computing so up to now you've
had to dumb yourself down to the level
of the computer and you you adapt
yourself to how the computer works and
the idea in humans that our computing is
make the computer adapt itself to you
come up to your level and so ideally
you'll be interacting or interfacing
with technology at the level that people
interact with each other