Japanese scientists have developed an artificial intelligence system for the android Erica, which allows her to react naturally to the laughter of the interlocutor. Now Erica can not only recognize a person’s laughter, but also determine whether she should laugh in response and what type of laughter to use for this.
Scientists from Kyoto University (Japan) have developed an artificial intelligence system that allowed the Japanese android robot Erica to respond appropriately to the laughter of the interlocutor. At the same time, scientists did not seek to make Erica detect laughter or respond to a joke, but tried to endow artificial intelligence with a human sense of humor. The results of their work are published in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AIRWAVES.
The authors tested the trained
AI in four short two- to three-minute dialogues between a human and Erica. In the first scenario, she reacted only with polite laughter, in the second and third she laughed merrily, and in the last she used both types of laughter. The scientists also created two other sets of the same dialogues, but in one of them Erica did not laugh at all, and in the other she laughed every time the interlocutor laughed, regardless of the context.
After that, 130 people listened to each dialogue in three scenarios and assessed how empathetic and human Erica was, as well as how natural and appropriate her reaction was. The system of joint laughter proved to be the best. Thus, the robot can simultaneously perform several tasks for processing human laughter and choose a specific answer, which in the future will make conversations with robots more natural and comfortable for users.