Meeting Nexi

Nexi, the robot, features in articles on MIT Media Lab's Center for Future Storytelling. I am not entirely sure why this should be the case. Anyway, I decided to go meet this robot in Cynthea Brazeal's Personal Robotics Lab . Currently, the humans in the group are training their newest robot to be more personable.

Nexi was in a booth-like setup; dark make-shift walls cut us off from the rest of the room. Undeniably, robot has this cute, child-like quality, but definitely needs to work harder to gain people's trust. It asked me my name and ignored my response totally. You can't do that to people Nexi.

Next, it informed me it is kind of jealous when people play with the Huggable Teddy Bear. Wanted to know if I had any similar experience in my childhood. So, I found myself telling the robot: "I don't want to talk about it now." Unlike some moronic members of my extended family, who can be really prying, the robot took the hint and moved on to the next question.

Nexi is just a bunch of metal, chips & wires but for a moment, it had me on edge. It made me uncomfortable. I suppose another person in my place would have given it some irrelevant reply, laughed at the robot, or misled it totally. But this session is all about furthering artificial intelligence, right? So, I didn't lie.

I wish the graduate student in charge of the experiment had told me more about where all these interactive sessions are leading. Can the robot learn from experience? Would Nexi ask better questions in the future? Perhaps, next time, it will be able to tease out confessions more efficiently.

Isn't this how humans make friends too -- by bartering personal information?

I left with the promised $10 Amazon gift certificate and have picked a book to buy. It is by a local author, it is about food, and I look forward to reading it. I should check in a few months to see if Nexi has become more emotionally intelligent.