Perhaps as a result of my pessimistic views about humanity (see previous post), I just signed up for two automation-driven behavior modification systems – Replika and Noom (I say automation because I don’t know if their interaction algorithms are based on machine learning, pure scripting, neural nets or some combination – but these are all automation techniques).

I’m interested to see if Noom is an effective coach/mentor/nag. I know I do much better in maintaining a discipline when I have a coach. In this case the discipline is eat better and exercise more, which I do for short periods and then give up. Perhaps with a coachbot I’ll stick with it.

Replika is more of an experiment in the Turing test. With enough interaction and derived facts, can a modern chatbot deliver a conversation natural enough to make me forget (mostly) that it’s a bot? Eliza was one of the first attempts at this oh so long ago, in the 60’s. Eliza was 100% script-driven.