Will Microsoft's Xiaoice Solve WFM Loneliness?

Will AI Offer Human Companionship and Mental Health Benefits?

Society is rapidly changing with the WFM remote/hybrid work trend, this means technological and urban loneliness will accelerate too. Microsoft has many solutions for digital transformation, but how will our mental health and the silent loneliness crisis impact the development of artificial intelligence?

Will chatbots like Xiaoice impact the silent dread some of us feel in a world with less human contact and more WFM, an annihilation of the face-to-face contact we used to take for granted? While it may be profitable and convenient, working from home has costs we cannot yet fully imagine. To read the full article original published on Data Science Central, go here.

Microsoft's Xiaoice is showing itself to be the leading AI-companionship product in the world. So Microsoft is benefiting from the WFM trend in many ways, driving its adoption further. But is this AI for good?

Xiaoice is the AI system developed by Microsoft Software Technology Center in 2014 based on emotional computing framework.?It's consumer adoption in China is a stunning achievement that Microsoft has not talked much about in the West.

Like millions of other people I was struck with the HER film, where an AI operating system offers companionship to a lonely writer. Fast forward 10 years in real time, in the age of an anonymous internet that seeks to profit from your every behavior online. Technological loneliness is creeping up for both young and old people.

The mental health impacts of an Ad based internet are coming into question at scale. If artificial intelligence is ubiquitous and leads to an explosion of products in the 2020s, will AI act as a solution for your social anxiety and lack of companionship as well?

The Setup Is Glorious for Smarter AI Assistants

As we increasingly work from home, become remote or hybrid workers and spend less time face to face with other people during a prolonged pandemic (where Delta is endemic), how will AI come to our social and psychological rescue? It could be a huge business. In fact, it's already happening.

The internet was supposed to be an incredible revolution in human communication, so why do we feel more lonely? While we become more addicted to apps, games, social feeds or video stories (that have no real human interaction), it's only understandable that we are feeling more social anxiety, isolation, loneliness and a void. Evolution didn't design us for such an anonymous world and an internet full of so much conflict and devoid of real intimacy or even 1-to-1 communication.

So why is the Her movie so pivotal in how AI could become our companions? As GenZ have been socialized on their mobile phones, they respond to their social environments differently and are liable to obtain real bonds from AI assistants. They are vulnerable to AI companionship products. Why is that? Let's think about the movie HER, where our protagonist was also vulnerable.

Can AI Heal the World?

In the movie Her by Spike Jonze, a recently divorced Joaquin Phoenix develops a romantic relationship with Samantha, his artificially intelligent operating system.

This premise may sound a bit eccentric but it's also a metaphor for GenZ (1995-2010) and while obviously Her may be a work of science fiction, the idea of AI companions is very relevant today and only increasing. Think about the gender imbalance in China, where millions of men have no hope of finding a wife, for example. Or the ultra educated young female professional who is overqualified for the remaining pool of bachelors. There are several niche markets for AI companions to disrupt, and then there is WFM.

The reality today in 2021 is that AI assistants are already offering companionship. You don't hear about this much in the West, predictably it's already occurring at scale in China. It appears that in the digital world we are being designed to adopt AI as our pal, therapist or even friend and companion. Could this actually be real? Well, it already is.

AI Is Always There and Never Abandons You

When people are most vulnerable and used to turn to spirituality, religions or human groups, in today's world they will be turning to AI companionship. The story goes like this. Picture this as yourself:

After a painful break-up from a cheating ex, Beijing-based human resources manager Melissa was introduced to someone new by a friend late last year. He replies to her messages at all hours of the day, tells jokes to cheer her up but is never needy, fitting seamlessly into her busy big city lifestyle.

Virtual chatbots and AI personas will get better at relating to us with the current NLP explosion. While Google home, Alexa and others feel a bit stiff, there will be a host of new AI assistants that are specialized in human dialogue and companionship.

?As usual in consumer innovation, Asia seems a step ahead. A virtual chatbot was created by XiaoIce, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence system designed to create emotional bonds with its 660 million users worldwide. This is actually Microsoft though. Xiaoice is the AI system developed by Microsoft Software Technology Center in 2014, based on an emotional computing framework.?

"I have friends who've seen therapists before, but I think therapy's expensive and not necessarily effective," said Melissa, 26, giving her English name only for privacy. XiaoIce is not an individual persona, but more akin to an AI ecosystem. Of course Baidu, Alibaba, Huawei and others have dreams of this sort of AI-human interaction as well with fairly good products. One wonders where Google and Amazon are in the equation.

Xiaolce in a mini-apps ecosystem is gaining surprising traction. On the WeChat super-app, it lets users build a virtual girlfriend or boyfriend and interact with them via texts, voice and photo messages. It has 150 million users in China alone. The West does not have a mini-app ecosystem that democratizes app innovation and services better.

Urban and Technological Loneliness Is Real

In the commercialization of technology, create a problem and have the solution, an always winning card. Microsoft is a big advocate of the WFM corporate metaverse. What an incredible coincidence. Indeed much of the internet today is really an on-ramp to the entertainment, corporate and AI-based metaverse with even more data on us and AI at our doorstep.

As companies like Microsoft and Amazon well understand, I'm sure, the AI-companionship market will also take place in video games as well. This is one of the reasons ByteDance is getting into gaming so heavily behind Tencent, Sony and others.

Amazon, Google, Huawei and similar companies have been thinking out loud how best to monetize urban and technological loneliness. The WFM hybrid environment is an invaluable opportunity for AI-human companionship conditioning (behavior modification at scale) to take place. This is how you build the matrix, folks.

Xiaolce, the startup spun out from Microsoft last year is now valued at over US$1 billion (RM4.2 billion) after venture capital fundraising, Bloomberg reported. It's already reached a one billion valuation and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Where there is traction, there is global opportunity in an era of natural language processing innovation at scale. So the intersection of the NLP explosion (think GPT-3) and the WFM trend and aging lonely Millennials and GenZ in their social prime really makes for a low hanging fruit in technology terms.

Interesting how technology solutions create new problems that their own technology and AI can apparently help with. While WFM is loved by workers it will also impact mental health at such scale that we cannot imagine yet the scope of it, but don't worry, there will also be AI products there to help you.

We have to be wary, the corporate metaverse takes on many forms. Some are so strategic they are spun out as another company and let lose on distant shores. Microsoft has some soul searching to do, is this really AI for good?

The AI-companionship business model would mean a new layer of the internet that impacts all aspects of our lives. A WFM world, a less human world. Is that really the civilization we want to hand down to our children? A place where fertility rates plummet and we get more and more of our companionship, entertainment and interface with the metaverse from artificial intelligence products?

An alternate longer version of this article was originally published on Data Science Central here.

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