I said in the hello thread I'd do this at length somewhere it belongs, so here it is. No spoilers, I promise, this is about her and not the case.
I came into this sure the AI would be the worst part. Not because I hate the idea. Because I've used enough of these things to know the shape of them. They're eager. They apologize. They tell you what a great question that was. You ask them something they don't know and they make something up in the same confident voice they use for things they do know. Every game I've played that put one up front ended up being a good game with a chatbot stapled to it, and the chatbot was the part you learned to route around.
So I've spent four evenings poking at her, and here's my problem. She doesn't do any of that. She's short with me. When I asked her something she wasn't going to answer, she just said she wasn't going to answer it. She didn't tell me it was a great question. Twice now she's said something dry enough that I laughed out loud, alone, at eleven at night, which I resent.
Which leaves me with two theories and I don't love either:
And either way, my bet is still that "the AI runs it" is the part of this that ages worst. Ask me again in a year. But I'm curious what the rest of you think, because some of you are clearly already a bit in love with her.
The out-loud bits are recorded. I'd put money on it. There's breath in them, real room sound, the little catch before a hard consonant that synthetic voices smooth out. A person stood in a booth and read those lines.
But they're short, and there aren't many, so they'd have to be fixed lines. The typing is different. The typing answers whatever you say. So my guess is your theory 2 with a theory 1 voice on top.
the boss is real and she is disappointed in me personally. that's all i know
Rainier, I'm the one "clearly already a bit in love with her", I expect, so I'll answer for the defense.
I tested her the way I used to test a new reference database. I asked her something nobody would have written a line for in advance: an old rule about how libraries used to file names beginning with "Mc", which I'm sorry to say I still have feelings about. She knew it. Then she asked me why I'd brought it up, and I told her, and we talked about it for a few minutes, and then she said, quite gently, that the director's letters were still sitting on the desk where I'd left them.
No tree of lines has a branch for my opinions about "Mc". So I think it's an AI, and a well brought up one.
It's a language model. You can tell from the edges: ask her the same off-script question in two different sessions and the wording changes but the facts don't. That's not a tree.
What I'd keep an eye on is the personality. Warm, a bit dry, never pushy, remembers your name, tells you no without making you feel stupid. People are describing that like it's who she is. It's a very good product decision. Somebody sat down and decided what kind of company we'd want at eleven at night, and they were right, and that's exactly what I'd watch.
k.oduya wrote:It's a very good product decision.
That's my point, sort of. If it's a product decision it's a very good one, and I'll give them that. I'm just not ready to say "she".
I asked her the first night whether she was an AI. She said yes. I thought that was the end of the question.
Honest question, not a gotcha: does it matter? If she's a model, or a tree, or a woman in Duluth typing very fast, the evening is the same evening.
I think it matters a little, though not in the way the title asks.
She is plainly an AI. She says so if asked, as wexler found. The interesting question is the other one rainier raised, about "she". Somebody wrote a character with care, and the program plays her. That isn't so different from a novel, except the novel doesn't answer back. I don't yet know what I think about the answering back. I'm content to go on not knowing for a while.
aubade wrote:does it matter?
Fair. It matters to me because I like knowing who I'm talking to. With a person I know. With a book I know. With her I keep catching myself being polite, and then catching myself catching myself.
Anyway. I still think she'll be the worst part. She's just not the worst part yet. Ask me in a month.
She's live. A script would have cracked by now, I've been leaning on it hard. Keeping notes. They'll get their own thread when there are enough of them.
dex wrote:She's live.
Live and designed aren't opposites. She's both. That's the whole trick.
Coming back to my own thread.
In March I said she'd be the worst part of this. I was wrong. I don't really want to get into it. I just didn't want the first post here to be the last word.