Stewing Hens

I have had some ideas stewing for quite some time so I am going to write them down here. All licensed under CC-By-3.0

HabitBot

A bot which helps you build habits. Embodied social agent version of “Atomic Habits” and such biblia.

CompanionBot

HabitBot but which hangs out and does more things than just build habits. It gives you companionship and helps you build an ecosystem around you. More aimed towards targeting loneliness and related syndromes.

This is borne out of the idea: “If we are the average of 5 people we interact with daily, how can we ensure that we always interact with a positive, happy, encouraging charming personality who not only hangs out with us but also helps expand our horizon with new knowledge and perspectives on old one”

KultureBot

A CompanionBot who can switch between different cultures. The focus here is on identifying the markers of a culture and having a robot embody it “succesfully” (someone interacting can successfully or almost identify the culture)

What do I mean by “culture”? “Bro”, “Nerd”, “Fitness Geek”, “Teacher”, “Space Nerd” are all identifiers of cultures. “Indian”, “Asian” are more like mega-cultures. I would rather use the word “tribe” to describe them since we mostly identify them by ideas which are “non-normative” to our culture by saying sentences like “In India, people first become engineers/doctors/lawyers and then they decide what to do with their lives”

An identifying factor for tribes is grouping. But this grouping is more intensive than identifiers for cultures like “bro”,“nerd”. It’s perhaps because there are more physical identifiers for a tribe.

And all that’s a wannabe anthropologist’s attempt at talking about culture :)

BelieveMeBot

A KultureBot who successfully convinces you about false ideas from a field it knows zilch about.

First, it exhibits a certain culture e.g. a roboticist. Second, it gathers info about a seemingly or completely unrelated topic. e.g. privacy laws or politics. Third, it makes casual but partially or completely false remarks about this topic.

Finally, we run a study comparing humans who are experts vs the BelieveMeBot.

SociallyAwkardBot

A robot whom you teach social skills like mixing with others at a party, making friends when you don’t know anyone, pitching an idea to someone in a party, etc.

This is more of an Learning from Demonstration technique exploration.

This bot is very much inspired by my dearest friend Pam from Center for Applied Systems and Software who has helped me build US specific social skills and helps me out in all social situations.

What’s with the title, bot?

Today’s title was inspired by the Deck Family Farm where I am a subscriber and who are offering stewing hens this week!