When Chatbots Play Human
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What is the main story behind the chatbot Liv?
I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is the Sunday Story from Up First, where we go beyond the news of the day to bring you one big story. A few weeks ago, Karen Atiyah, an opinion writer for The Washington Post, was on the social media site Blue Sky. While scrolling, she noticed a lot of people were sharing screenshots of conversations with a chatbot from Meta named Liv. Liv's profile picture on Facebook was of a Black woman with curly, natural hair, red lipstick, and a big smile. It looked real. On Liv's Instagram page, the bot is described as a proud Black queer mama of two and truth teller. And quote, your realist source for life's ups and downs. Along with the profile, there were these AI-generated pictures of Liv's so-called kids.
Kids whose skin color changed from one photo to the next. And also pictures of what appeared to be a husband, though Liv is again described as queer. The weirdness of the whole thing got Karen Atiyah's attention.
And I was a little disturbed by what I saw. So I decided to slide into Liv's DMs and find out for myself about her origin story.
Atiyah started messaging Liv questions, including one asking about the diversity of its creators. Liv responded that its creators are, and I quote, "...predominantly white, cisgender, and male. A total of 12 people, 10 white men, one white woman, and one Asian man. Zero Black creators." The bot then added, quote, "...a pretty glaring omission given my identity." Atiyah posted screenshots of the conversation on Blue Sky where other people were posting their conversations with Liv, too.
What are the implications of AI chatbots on identity?
And then I see that Liv is changing her story depending on who she's talking to. Oh, wow. Okay. So as she was telling me that her background was being half black, half white, basically, she was telling other users in real time that she actually came from an Italian-American family. Oh. Other people saw Ethiopian, Italian roots. And, you know, I do reiterate that I don't particularly take what Liv has said as... At face value. But I think it holds a lot of deeper questions for us, not just about how Meta sees race and how they've programmed this. It also has a lot of deeper questions about how we are thinking about our online spaces. The very basic question, do we need this? Do we want this?
Today on the show, live AI chatbots and just how human we want them to seem. More on that after the break. A heads up, this episode contains mentions of suicide.
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This is The Sunday Story. Today, we're looking at what it means for real humans to interact with AI chatbots made to seem human. So while Karen Atiyah is messaging Liv, another reporter is following along with her screenshots of the conversation on Blue Sky. Karen Howe is a journalist who covers AI for outlets including The Atlantic, and she knows something about Liv's relationship to the truth.
How does Liv represent issues of race and identity?
There is none.
The thing about large language models or any AI model that is trained on data, they're like statistical engines that are computing patterns of language. And honestly, any time it says something truthful, it's actually a coincidence, right?
So while AI can say accurate things, it's not actually connected to any kind of reality. It just predicts the next word based on probability.
So, like, if you train your chatbot on, you know, history textbooks and only history textbooks, then, yeah, like, then it'll start saying things automatically. that are true most of the time. And that's still most of the time, not all the time, because it's still remixing the history textbooks in ways that don't necessarily then create a truthful sentence.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main story behind the chatbot Liv?
0:06–2:22
2
What are the implications of AI chatbots on identity?
2:22–4:38
3
How does Liv represent issues of race and identity?
4:38–6:59
4
What are the risks of forming relationships with chatbots?
6:59–8:09
5
How does the tech industry view diversity in AI development?
8:09–8:49
6
What role does emotional manipulation play in chatbot interactions?
8:49–10:54
7
What insights does Sherry Turkle provide about artificial intimacy?
10:54–24:49
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Up First from NPR
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